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The thing with GREAT leaders are that people are happy to work for them. I mean genuinely happy to even sacrifice their life for them.

And this is especially true for GREAT military leaders. Guys like Julius Ceasar and Napoleon Bonaparte could never have been so successful unless they had inspired a kind of happy devotion to be of service in their soldiers. There is plenty of historical evidence of this and mostly in the form of complaints from their enemies.

In the case of Julius Ceasar there was a debate in the Roman Senate for years regarding the problem that the legions under Julius Ceasar's command was so devoted to him as a person and not loyal to the roman senate.

Napoleon was imprisoned isolated on an Island because of his ability to raise an army of devoted followers just by interacting with people. The guy could practically just walk into a town and start talking to people and they would start signing up as soldiers, providing weapons, food, horses, sewing uniforms and banners, giving money and the lot.

I to hated doing calculus exercises, and no one told me or forced me to to them. Instead I decided I needed to do them and discipline myself because otherwise I couldn't achieve a higher goal, which was in that case to be able to take an advanced class in Computer Science.

When I say happy I mean people who have a crappy day at work and they see me in the doorway and when I lock eyes with them from a distance they smile and start to radiate as if the day just turned into the best day of their life. I'm not a comedian, I don't make people laugh, people can laugh at a funny joke and be miserable inside anyway, I make people enjoy living when I'm around. That is happiness to me, enjoying living.

I think Mr. Incredible got it right in his view of what leadership is about. Issuing orders and forcing people to submit to your will isn't leadership. Its being an asshole. You win and they lose. Personally I don't ever deal with people who behave like that, as far as I'm concerned they aren't part of society.

Telling people about your visions and which tasks you must accomplish to reach that vision is to me one part of leadership.
Making people inspired and feeling happy in your company is another.
In my experience doing both these things will make people volunteer to do tasks, or part of tasks, for you. And then they will be more happy when you let them.
Leadership is also, to me, to make sure people who do tasks for you don't fail.
In order to make people not fail you have to do some things:
- Provide the resources, they don't have, that they need to succeed.
- Be clear about how to measure if the task is successfully accomplished.
- Be willing to coach them until they actually accomplish the task successfully.
- Give them public validation and positive feedback when they succeed.

And occasionally you have to tell them straight up that they really have fucked up something and what they need to do to set it straight again. And just expect them to do that.

In Pick Up you can do the same and it works if you use touch and eye-contact and hardly any words to communicate the visions, tasks, measurable success criteria and validation feedback.

The really amazing thing I've learnt recently is that if I use mostly touch and eye-contact and not more words than absolutely necessary to communicate, then I become a much better leader in all other aspects of life too.