Leadership lies and the survival instinct

One aspect of leadership that has always fascinated me is the need for judiscious expression of the truth. I've been reminded of this in reading Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership by Andrew Roberts.

There is a passage where Roberts describes Churchill's response to Dunkirk. Churchill offered the British people hope on the most tenuous of possibilities (at that time) that America would join the allies. Roberts says that the "crucial point was that if the British people were being gulled, all but a tiny minority of them actually wanted to be." Let's call this the leadership lie of my title. For people to follow a leader, lies are not enough. People must be willing to swallow them. Why did they do so in this case? Because the only alternative, admitting defeat and seeking peace with Hitler was a completely unacceptable option. So, in order to survive, people are willing to submit to a will strong enough to convince them, with judiscious lies if necessary, of the possibility of success.

A recent, (OK not very recent) post by Kathy Sierra talks about this in a more modern context. Here, she talks about how tricking our brain into using its preshistoric survival instinct strengths can be fascinatingly effective at motivating and increasing effectiveness. This is not a new idea, but it's a good one. I've heard it expressed as 'If only we would do to succeed what we will do to survive...' This can be a very effective approach, but it has scary applications too.

Well, powerfully express a threat, and then the people will accept a strong willed leader offering them a barely credible course of action. Does this take you where it took me?