Maxwell's 5th Law: The Law of E.F. Hutton

John C. Maxwell's fifth law of leadership, from p. 43 of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Follow Them and People Will Follow You, (Nelson Books, 1998), says,

When the real leader speaks, people listen.

E. F. Hutton was a financial services company. They ran a series of ads set in a business meeting with a bunch of suits. There was a bunch of conversation, than one guy says to another, "What do you think?" The second guy starts to speak and every else shut up and turned to listen to the guy about to speak. The over-dubbed voice said "When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen."

In 1977, my first wife and I had driven to Charleston, West Virginia, to pick up my son, whom we were adopting. We had my 4-year old, black, daughter with us. We'd driven 16 hours from Madison, Wisconsin. It was about 9:00 PM and we were all extremely tired and hungry.

We checked into our motel, then went to one of these chain restaurants to get some dinner. My daughter is black. Two white parents and a black child. Our entrance was such that we triggered what I called at the time the E.F. Hutton effect. As soon as we had entered the place, everybody stopped talking, turned, and stared at us. "Why are they looking at us?" my daughter said. "Because we don't match," said my wife. [We had long been aware of being noticed because two white parents and a black child was pretty much of a novelty then. Not so much now.] I knew the ads because they were all over the television that year.

The waitress seated us and everybody went back to their own lives. We ordered, ate, and left without incident. I called the head-turning effect the "E.F. Hutton Effect." Every time I reread this section of Maxwell, that incident comes back to me.

I've had it ocassionally as a Realtor. Somebody in a group will aske me, "Well, Tim, how's the market?" and everybody will stop and look at me.

Maxwell says you can tell who the leader in the room is, because he or she's the one everybody will look at or listen to.

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Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.