Listening to Wannabes

Watching football doesn't make you an athlete any more than reading a medical book makes you a doctor.

Wannabes.

Armchair quarterbacks.

Crazed fans who think they know more than the coaches and players on the field, and they don't hesitate to tell anyone and everyone how much they think they know.

In the martial arts world, we call these characters "Wannabes". Individuals who "want to be" the next Chuck Norris or Jackie Chan, have watched all the martial arts movies, and believe they are the re-incarnation of Ip Man, but have never taken a lesson, or at best they are a colored belt who couldn't cut it and quit.

The world is FULL of Wannabes.

I had the opportunity to be backstage for the Arkansas Toughman Competition this past weekend. As the Toughman Competitors prepared to walk to the ring, I watched as excited fans, "Wannabe" fighters who were too timid to step up and actually compete in the ring, step up to "coach" these amateur brawlers just before they walked to the ring to do battle.

While they were passionate about what they were saying, it was the absolute worst advice a fighter could get before stepping into the ring. Even worse, some of these amateur brawlers were listening intently, as if the guidance and advice of someone who knows nothing about boxing would give them an advantage over their opponent in the ring.

And one by one, they lost.

There's a leadership lesson in this...

Bad advice, accepted and acted upon, always yields a bad outcome.

How many of us are guilty of listening to Wannabes?

Taking the advice and guidance of people who are either failures, or individuals who have never even tried?

It's like the young man who asked his aunt, who had been married seven times, for marriage advice. Or the young girl who is getting financial guidance from her best friend from high school who is still working at an entry-level position twenty-five years later and is $37,000 in credit card debt.

Why do we seek guidance and advice from Wannabes? Why do we ask unsuccessful people to teach us the secrets to more success in life?

I believe there are three primary reasons.

First, we all want the encouragement and support of our friends, the people in our inner circle. We like them, and we also likely trust them. We want their approval, and we seek their guidance and advice.

Why?

Because that's what friends do.

But herein lies the first problem.

Les Brown said it well. You become the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with.

If they are unsuccessful, if they struggle with money, or if they seem to never get ahead in life, the odds are high that you will become unsuccessful, struggle with money, and never get ahead in life.

My mom used to remind me, "If you spend all your time hanging out with turkeys, you'll never learn how to fly like an eagle."

My parents were intentional about putting me in front of exceptional people. People who were successful, who were leaders, and who were committed to a lifetime of personal growth and development. People who were willing to share their knowledge, wisdom, and insight to help me become better at who I am and what I do. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.)

As I grew older, I saw that I could learn more from successful people than Wannabes, and built my inner circle accordingly. I learned from my parents (and other strong leaders) to always ask the question, "Do I want to be this person?" before I allowed them into my inner circle.

What about you?

The second reason we often take bad advice from Wannabes is they are often believable. I've met some really passionate people who don't have a clue what they are talking about, but are some of the most convincing people you'll ever hear speak.

Why?

When you believe something to be true, even if it is not, to you it is truth. So, you can speak with conviction, persuading others to believe as you do. It's one of the reasons urban myths continue to persist. Passionate people who believe are SO convincing, you simply accept what they say as truth without ever taking the time to verify.

Remember the story of Chicken Little? Chicken Little was struck in the head with an acorn and believed the sky was falling. As he ran to tell other farm animals. they blindly accepted Chicken Little's words and joined in the frenzy to warn the barnyard the world was coming to an end. Before you knew it, the entire barnyard was frantically expecting doomsday.

How often do we simply accept the stories told by the Wannabes, the Chicken Littles in our lives, adding our voices to the fray, mindlessly running around echoing what they are saying without question?

Cultists like Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, Marshall Applewhite, and David Koresh are prime examples of deluded, passionate people who were SO convincing in their "sky is falling" presentations, people blindly followed them to their death.

While that's an extreme example, it demonstrates the power of a Wannabe to believe something so passionately, others

Thirdly, we don't take the time to think for ourselves.

Sometimes, we intuitively KNOW something isn't right, or what someone is saying just doesn't ring true, but we don't take the time to pause, to question, and to simply ask ourselves, "Is this really true?"

To illustrate this point when I'm talking, I will often refer to a made-up statistic that says 82.7% of all "facts" are made up at the moment. And then, I'll pause to see if the audience accepts this as TRUTH, or takes the time to think for themselves.

It's easier to simply accept what we see on TV, read in the news, or hear on a podcast rather than taking the time to verify whether or not what we're being told is truth, partial truth, or an outright lie.

In 1938, Orson Wells took to the airwaves on Halloween Eve night for yet another installment of Mercury Theater on the Air. On this night, he chose to dramatize H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds". Panic ensued as many listeners chose to believe what they were hearing rather than the reality they were living, resulting in national hysteria.

Here's the problem.

It's easier to believe a trusted source of information than to take the time to do your own homework to confirm its validity.

Yet, how often do we end up acting on incorrect, incomplete, or bad information?

One of my favorite "sacred cows" when working with an individual or an organization is the statement, "We've always done it this way."

It reminds me of the story of the wife who always cut off the end of the ham before she put it in the oven to bake. One day her husband asked why. She replied that was the way her Mom taught her to bake a ham.

Curious, the wife reached out to her Mom and asked her why she always cut off the end of the ham before baking. Her response was identical. It was the way her own Mom had taught her to bake a ham.

Even more curious, the two Moms reached out to Grandma to ask her the rationale for cutting off the end of the ham before putting it in the oven to bake. Grandma's response was priceless:

"We had a small, pot-bellied stove growing up, and I had to cut off the end of the ham so it would fit in the stove to bake."

These two Moms had unwittingly become Wannabes simply because they chose not to think for themselves, question the validity of the information they had received, determine if it is still useful today, and adapt accordingly.

When we fail to think for a change, nothing changes in our lives.

Let me go back to the Arkansas Toughman Competition to bring today's leadership lesson in for a landing.

After watching these Wannabes giving worthless, and sometimes dangerous advice, to these young amateur brawlers for about an hour, I had enough. I approached these young men and asked them what their qualifications were to be giving instruction to these fighters. The hallway became quiet.

I then asked them if they wanted to be responsible for the outcome of the fighters who took their advice and ended up getting hurt in the ring, and reminded them they bought a ticket to watch the fights, nothing more.

One by one, these overly passionate fans, Wannabes, turned and went back to the stands to cheer their fighters on.

Sometimes, a leader must call out those who aren't qualified to lead and remind them they need to earn the right to speak into someone else's life. You can't lead where you haven't gone, and you can't teach what you don't know.

Watching UFC doesn't make you a cage fighter any more than reading a medical book makes you a doctor. Yet the world is full of Wannabes who don't know the difference.

Maybe we'd all be better off if we stopped listening to the Wannabes and started intentionally choosing who we allowed to speak into our lives. And maybe, just maybe, that means spending less time with the Wannabes and spending more time with those who are successful - and can teach us to be successful as well.

Be intentional about who you allow in your inner circle, because you will become those people.

Remember that just because someone is believable and convincing, it doesn't mean they're right.

And, when we fail to think for a change, nothing changes in our lives.