The Less Influential Influential

I found this article from Knowledge@Wharton, the magazine from the UPenn B-school of the same name to be incredibly interesting. The key take away for me was, in short, that it is not the person who says, "Listen to me!" that gets listened to the most but rather the person who is asked, "What do you think?". It makes all the sense in the world but yet it was so eye-opening to see it represented this way.

I'd hypothesize that one of the differences in that the self-reported opinion leaders are more focused on themselves and how others perceive them than the Physician 184 types, who are focused and committed to their vocation, interest, cause or what have you. Maybe they're more interested in accomplishment and advancement related to their passion than self accomplishment and self advancement.

Particularly interesting to me — and I've been thinking about it a lot as it relates to me, my colleagues — is the thought put forth by one of the researcher that contends "...self-reported opinion leaders are less interested in what others are doing...'I know I'm important. I don't need to care about what other people are doing.' "

As stated in the article, "...just because people think they're important doesn't mean it's true." I'll keep my eyes open for the second study to see if it still plays out the way it did in the first one.