90. Good Followers Are Important Too

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Good Followers Are Important Too.”

Almost my entire childhood, I was indoctrinated by school propaganda and child programming into thinking that to be valuable in society, you had to be a good leader. We were told that we were all leaders and that we needed to lead the people around us. We were pumped up with motivational stories and told how special we were, but if everyone is meant to grow up to be a leader.

Then who's going to be left to follow? It almost seems like telling everyone they can and should all be leaders is the same as awarding everyone with a first-place prize. There is no leader without a follower, and at the end of the day, it is the followers that are really the source of power, not the leader.

A leader only has as much power as is given to him or her by their followers. In politics, we focus. Almost all of our attention is on the leaders of the different movements, but those movements are worthless without followers. One time when I was in college, I put together a super successful event that had little to nothing to do with me.

We hosted this art gala in my apartment that was intended to be a bit of a parody. But we ended up getting several legitimate student artists to come and display their work, and we had a musical performance along with fake art critics walking around. It was a blast, and I think everyone really enjoyed the event.

But what I found funny is that my only real contribution was telling my roommates that I thought it'd be fun and getting them excited about it. They took care of the rest. I suppose you could say that I put it together and that I had something to do with how some of the things happened, but it really was a success because of the people that propped up my idea.

So all that being said, I think the person or people willing to follow are the unsung heroes. Every city in America seems to have a road named after Martin Luther King. Junior, but maybe the credit should be attributed more so to the people that followed him in his movement, because almost the entirety of his success came from the solidarity of his followers.

When a charismatic leader successfully calls attention to something that hasn't been discussed before, or sways people to a new kind of thinking, it's successful not because of their greatness, but because something inside enough people resonated. Just enough to make them followers. It's almost as if popular movements are just waiting underneath the surface when the time is right.

Someone that can articulate what people are feeling can then ride that wave into power. A person trying to convince the rich that they're morally bankrupt for having more money than other people is unlikely to be successful. If they preach that to the poor, it may have some stain power. The followers need to be ready for the movement if it's going to accomplish anything.

Hitler rose to power on the underlying resentment against Communist and Jews. Napoleon took power through a military coup, but was propped up by a loyal army that was excited to see a version of France that was becoming the master of Europe. Some people think about acquiring power in terms of doing whatever it takes to get there.

They may appeal to the right people when it suits their ambitions, all in hopes of attaining that power. And to many of them, the means justify the end. When they do attain that power, they think I'll make it all right now. But the power they now hold depends on whoever is propping it up. Holding power, regardless of how you attained it, makes you a servant to the source of that power.

Whether that power comes from masses of devoted followers or corrupt power brokers, you'll still be a servant to the source of that power. I wonder if it would be fair to say that leaders are more often a reflection of the people that follow them than independent drivers of change. Things shift in the world, not so much because of the leaders in the world, but because of us.

If society goes through a massive transformation as a new political system comes into play, that can probably be attributed. To us, we give so much attention to becoming a leader when maybe we should spend more time learning to become a good follower. There are far more opportunities for an individual to be a follower than a leader.

So, all things considered, maybe that is what we need to spend more time thinking about how we follow and who we follow is far more important than whether or not we lead. I think even a good leader recognizes that there are times to follow someone else. It seems like good leadership often has less to do with knowing all the answers and telling everyone else what to do than it does about creating an environment where it's easy for people to contribute and taking advantage of those contributions.

On the other hand, being a good follower sometimes means recognizing when someone else can get the job done better than you, which ironically isn't too different from what I think a good leader does at the end of the day. Being a good follower can be broken down into a few things, so one, a good follower follows people that deserve to be followed.

Two, a good follower finds a way to be useful. Three. A good follower is loyal to their cause more than to their leader. There's no shame in being a follower. There's nothing lesser about a person who is a follower. There can be no leader without a follower. The world needs good leaders, but maybe even more than good leaders.

The world needs better followers. It might even be fair to say. That people were never meant to exclusively be a leader or to exclusively be a follower, and that good qualities of being both a leader and a follower include knowing when to step up. As well as knowing when to step back. This is Skipping Stones - “Good Followers Are Important Too.”

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