I wrote a post not that long ago, Better with Bob, about a guy who was my mentor.

One of the things Bob taught me was about Six-Percenters.

Bob came up with the theory that about 6% of all people are difficult to deal with. I heard Bob talk about this over the years and think he was mellowing a bit when he said, they were difficult to deal with, because he initially referred to them as dickheads.

I have to agree on both counts.

Do you know a six-percenter?  Perhaps you are the six-percenter in the room. You know who they are. The difficult person in meetings, all meetings, every time. The person who has their hand up first to ask why we have to volunteer. The person who knows their job specs back to front, and works to them, exactly. They are the person with the boss, the union, their wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend and lawyer on speed dial; just in case they have been dealt with in a manner they see as unfit for their standing.

It you don’t think they really exist, get on a 50 seater bus travelling interstate and you will always know who those 3 are who are going to cause ‘difficulties’ all the way, even before you leave suburbia. (3 is 6 percent of 50!)

There is another sad aspect to six-percenters. They attrack about 14% of the rest of the population as their followers or perhaps, better described as their posse.  This 14% are the ones that perhaps are a bit weak or more importantly need a leader to follow.

Now our six-percenters and their posse are a reasonable 20% of the people you have to deal with.  I am sure Bob was aware of this and the old adage that you spent 80% of your time dealing with 20% of the people!

The unfortunate part about six-percenters are that there is no point in trying to make them change – they will only change when they want to.  There is however a chance of saving the 14% all the time.

Those 14% just need the right leader to follow.

I suppose leadership is constantly about learning, and perhaps learning who you six-percenters are and not wasting time on them and finding the 14% and giving them someone else to follow.  Bearing in mind that leadership is different to leading (see my page under Better Stuff, Better at Leading with a leadership model Bob gave me).

Do we all spend too much time dealing with and having angst with six-percenters.

Waiting for them to change while they are possibly the greatest thorn in your side is a difficult proposition.  It is often that little prick (both literally and figuratively) that can lead to an infected sore, septicaemia and then death!

A question I often ask myself is why I am allowing someone else to dictate my happiness.  The answer is in the question, in that, I am allowing them.  I suppose my wife summed this up best in her muse My Happiness.

The most terrifying thing about six-percenters is that you may be one.  More terrifying is that you are part of the 14% in the mindless posse!  I am sure we all have six-percenter and 14%er moments in our life.  Some of us may even have been six-percenters, who for some reason changed.

In my post Better Hatred or Hated I explored the danger of anger and hating in your life.  I think dealing with six-percenters is often used as an excuse for not being a good leader.  I understand that good leaders also need good followers.  We do spend a lot of time talking about leadership when perhaps we should be teaching our kids about ‘followship’.  Bearing in mind this is not new and was around long before rocket science with Aristotle the Greek philosopher saying 200 years ago:

“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”

I know it is often hard to demonstrate good ‘followship’.  It often doesn’t have to do with me being part of the troublesome 20%, but that I don’t trust my ‘leader’.  Trust and values are the key I think.  I briefly wrote about values and trust in my post Mindfulness – Trust and have tried my own method of finding what my values really are which I describe on the page ‘Values‘ under the menu item Better Things on my home page.

So where are trust and values connected in both leadership and followship.  Surely if I believe, what you believe and I have the same values as you, then I trust you, I will follow you – simple really.  So, why doesn’t that always work so well.  Perhaps another key factor is that we all lose sight of the purpose of where we are going.  The six-percenter can always ‘win’ because they destroy the virtuous purpose with meetings, budgets, project projections, etc etc that we all have allowed to rule our lives.  Probably a good time to look at the real purpose of a lot of things – well, everything really.   I wrote in Better Hatred or Hated  that the ‘winner’ dies with the most joys not the most toys.  I think the six-percenter concentrates their life on the toys and even when they get them’ complain that they didn’t come with batteries.

My plan now is be a better man and to make sure that I am not the six-percenter in the room.