Words of Wisdom from Seth Godin on Leadership

Copyblogger has a good interview with Seth Godin who operates out of my old hometown of Irvington, NY. The interview is getting heavily re-tweeted right now. Asked to share some universal principles on leadership from his new book "Tribes", Seth offers these pearls:

• People want to belong, they want to be missed when they don’t show up.
• Charisma doesn’t make you a leader, leading gives you charisma.
• Most of all, people care about themselves.
• Faith is belief in the future and it is critical. Religion is a set of rules designed to amplify faith at the same time it guarantees the status quo. As you can guess, heretics have a lot of faith, but not so much patience with religion. And heretics are the ones who make change.
• When in doubt, work with small groups. If you can’t find 5 followers, how will you find 1000?
• Talk to people with respect, don’t advertise at them.
• Transparency is your only option, because the tribe will smell artifice.

I think that can be summed up as:

• In order to be a leader you must have followers.
• In order to get followers you must appear to interested in others.
• In order to be interested in others you have to treat other people like they are important even if they're not -- just don't be too obvious when you are pretending to care or they will catch on.