[July 08, 2014] Comedians and politicians appear to be the best at reading their audience. Not to equate them on their level of national importance, of course. They both base their livelihood on their ability to foresee how their audience will react to what they do (telling a joke or debating national security). Predicting the audience reaction is crucial to their job and to their power to influence people, control the setting, and be successful.
Leadership means having the ability to predict how the audience will react to the leader’s behavior will be received. Emphasis here is on their ability to predict the outcome. Of all the traits, predicting outcomes is more important than their assessment of audience reaction. From a practical standpoint, this will determine the success of a comedian or politician more than anything else.
As a recent example, the reaction by military personnel to the White House release of Bowe Bergdahl, U.S. Army. Bergdahl was held “captive” by the Taliban in Afghanistan for nearly five years. The circumstance of how he went missing is under investigation.1 Yet, it is clear to most military personnel that he deserted and should be court-marshaled for desertion and possibly treason. Yet, a national security White House official stated that Bergdahl served “with honor and distinction.”2
The fallout from this statement came as a huge shock to many. White House officials were clearly caught off guard at the blowback. What they failed to do was to predict how the audience (military personnel and their families) would react. They clearly underestimated how strongly military service members feel about the crime of desertion in wartime. Military members value duty, honor, country, courage, and loyalty to their brothers and sisters.
White House officials were not the only ones who failed to predict the blowback on this issue. The media, the larger media conglomerates in particular, completely missed the impact. None of them could believe that retrieving Bergdahl and calling his service honorable and with distinction, would be an insult to the military.
This is a great example of how to fail to predict the audience’s reaction. As I was watching late night comedy recently, it appears that the comedians were able to predict the outcome of this one much better.
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[1] http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/05/bergdahl-fellow-soldiers-not-yet-contacted-in-new-probe/
[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/06/politics/rice-cnn-interview/index.html