Hasan Davis will tell you things you already know. Things you were already told. Cliches about leaders, success and goals.

Being a leader is as simple as one, two, three.

Davis, a motivational speaker, demonstrated leadership by clapping on three and getting the audience at the University of Mary to follow. He spoke to the students, staff, faculty and community members as part of the university's leadership convocation Thursday morning.

He used the clapping game as a tool to talk about aspects of a leader and what holds a person back from being a leader.

Some audience members did not clap, some clapped on three, some immediately after three and some well after three was said. The audience failed the test.

"All we had to do to be successful was to meet the objective," Davis said.

But things like trust, embarrassment, focus and interpretation of the direction - clap on three - caused the different responses, he said.

Some people did not clap or did not clap immediately because they did not trust he would clap on three, he said. Other people were embarrassed to clap. Some people clapped on three or immediately after three, depending on the way they were taught to play the game as a child, he said.

"The first thing we tell a child to do is ask a question if they don't understand. The last thing we want to do is ask a question,"Davis said.

Fear causes people not to ask questions, and keeps them from succeeding, he said. He was in a class at an alternative school when he was a teen and didn't want to ask questions because everyone else in the class appeared to understand what the teacher said. He also has a learning disability, and didn't want the other students to tease him for not understanding. But, he reached a point that he decided to ask a question, and while one boy chided him, he got the information he needed.

Taking charge of one's own needs is part of what is needed to be a leader. Being responsible for a person's own actions also is a quality of a leader. Chewing gum in class when the teacher says not to, even as she chews gum, doesn't make it right, he said.

His father gave him a piece of advice that helped explain why it didn't make it right for him to chew gum:"Doing wrong because someone else is doing wrong will always leave you in the wrong."

But effective leaders have people who follow what they say, such as when he had people follow him on 1-2-3 clap, but he clapped between two and three.

"What you do trumps what you say,"he said.

A person is a role model to more people than he or she expects, from family members to children in the neighborhood. Some teens might not realize they are role models to younger people.

His message stuck with some of the students who attended the event.

"It was really good. He made a lot of good points,"sophomore Jamie Abraham said.

What stuck with her was what he said about learning by example, she said.

Davis found out the hard way about being a role model in high school. He jumped out the second-floor window of his school and some of the other teens thought it was crazy, but in a cool way. A third-grader who always was pestering Davis decided to pull the same stunt, and had to be hauled off the ledge by his teacher. Davis realized right there that he had to talk to the third-grader's class. It hit him that someone looked up to him, even though he didn't think there were any reasons for someone to look up to him.

"We're all role models, whether we choose to be or not,"he said.

Freshman Chris Bizenor thought Davis' life story was interesting, considering where Davis is now. Davis is an attorney and serves on the Federal Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee.

The lesson Bizenor will keep with him: "If you're going to say not to do something, you shouldn't do it either."

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@;bismarcktribune.com.)