To Follow and Not to Follow?

Society has touted in every business book that leadership is something everyone should strive from. Nearly every downtown in America has a monument of some great leader and people recite their histories as examples of the ideal way to live. However, if everyone was a leader who would then follow? Is developing lots of Chiefs and a few Indians really in the best interest of society?

If every worker was a leader the workplace would be one chaotic entity. There would be no order because people will assume that they can do what they want, when they want, because they feel a sense of entitlement. This doesn’t mean that leaders are pompous but that are the type of people who make key decisions. Imagine a workplace full of decision makers, but no one to follow those decisions.

If we looked at Alexander the great as part of the worlds superb leaders we find that few things are really mentioned about the followers. Almost no one wants to discuss the abilities of the followers and what they did to make the leader so powerful. Alexander The Great certainly would have been easily slaughtered by his enemies unless his followers were there to back him up.

Therefore, leadership must have followers and the more able the leader is to motivate these followers the more productive he will be. Typically the person with the right combination of clarity of thought, skill and ability takes the lead. When someone else should lead, even if only to get over a particular problem, the strong leader should have the ability to stand back.

Leaders and followers complement each other. Since followers develop a culture you can’t just switch leaders and hope that everything simply turns out well. The followers may reject the leader, break into different camps or even sabotage the leaders efforts. In the end the leader is powerless without his followers. A vote of “no confidence” can really damage leaders future prospects.

Is being a leader better then being a follower? One cannot exist without the other, leaders must have support and a single man cannot hope to accomplish what he can in a group. If we add in the concept that a group of decision makers likely won’t get anything done then we can unequivocally say “no, leadership is no better or no worse then a follower”.