Earlier today I was reading a news story about a protest that went on in Mexico over the weekend. The protest was for peace, but it had a strange overtone. That overtone was the overwhelming support of the people for a drug lord that had been killed in a confrontation with police on Thursday. People had all sorts of signs saying how great he was and how they would love him forever.

That might have seemed strange to a lot of people, but I fully understand it. The same thing happened many years ago when Pablo Escobar, another drug kingpin, was killed. People from his home area rallied in support of him as a fallen hero of the community and a true friend of Columbia.

Most of us tend to think that everyone else should be thinking like us. We all believe that, for the most part, our way of life is better and who would be crazy enough not to want to be like us.

What they miss is not that others might not want to be successful, but that not everyone is successful. Some people live in terrible poverty, looking for something positive in their lives to make them feel good and to give them hope that they can be something better than what they are.

And, unfortunately, sometimes it's bad people. Gang leaders are often celebrated within their own communities because they've achieved something that others wish they could. Those that are smart, and let's not kid ourselves gang leaders for the most part are really smart, will do something positive within their community to generate good will. Some give money to children, help sponsor feeding the poor, even giving gifts out for the holidays. Block parties in America are a common occurrence; make people happy and they'll sometimes forget that you're a dangerous person.

The drug lord killed last week, Nazario Moreno, was known to give bibles out to the poor, along with other charitable acts. He supposedly ran his operation with what's being called pseudo-Christian ideology. People within the community ate that up, and thus he was hailed for his generosity.

The same type of thing goes for Escobar. He never sold drugs in his home area, gave a lot of money to the poor, built things like schools and soccer fields, and was even instrumental in raising the standards of soccer throughout Columbia by giving money to the government for it and building soccer fields throughout the country. For a poor people, that type of visible generosity is hard to overcome by anyone on the outside, and explains why some of these people stay in power as long as they do.

This is why it's incumbent upon anyone in leadership positions to learn how to generate positive feelings within the people who work for them. It doesn't mean you can't be tough and demanding; who would ever mistake a drug kingpin for not being tough and demanding? What it means is that every person has trigger points for what makes them happy and content. Making people feel valued in some way is always best, and generates only good things in the long run.