Creating a Following

by Tom Haskins

In your present situation, you may or may not have a leadership position. That is a question of formal authority and commensurate responsibility. Regardless of that, you have an opportunity to function as a informal leader. You can combine a vision of what is possible from your own perspective and your ability to play the role of servant leader. It does not take power over others. It is something you can do by feeling like a leader and playing "follow the leader" in your situation.

There's no such thing as leading people without serving them. People who try to lead without serving are called "control freaks", "power trippers", "bullies", "micro-managers", or "tyrants". Their dictatorial style backfires. They create enemies, resistance, and vicious cycles. They abuse their power and tempt people to act helpless, victimized and dis-empowered. Everyone suffers from more tyrannical self discipline, and less: self respect, self expression and self awareness.

Following along with people's concerns creates followings. It makes more sense to pay attention to how we are following than to how we are leading. Thinking about leading gets us into the trap of over-bearing use of our authority. We forget to serve and then try to control people who do not feel served. They give us a taste of our own medicine by refusing to play our game of "follow the leader". If we don't realize how we have failed to provide leadership, we will get defensive about how people seem defiant, antagonistic, apathetic or spiteful. We will point fingers and blame the followers we are not following along with their line of reasoning.

We have to cover all four bases to play "follow the leader" effectively. The obvious facet is to provide leadership by acting like a leader. This must be kept in balance with following along with the people who are being served by the leadership. There is also a need to let them "do their own thing" that is permitted, protected and prescribed by the leader. The leader must also act on the basis of his/her own vision for the future from time to time. When all four bases are covered, leadership is "so easy it seems difficult". There is a flow to go with and a way where everything falls into place.

People will let us know when we are no longer leading them according to how they see everything. They will indirectly be saying "don't lead us this way". It won't make sense at first because we were not thinking there was a particular way we were leading them. The way we had in mind began to feel to them like we're indirectly saying "my way or the highway", "there's only one right way to do this", and "your way is wrong". Once the two or more ways become clear, we will realize how to combine them, take turns more often, or serve their ways better. We create a following by following along with their way of wanting to be led. Leading falls into place by paying attention to following along with how they are making sense to themselves. When we listen and then sound like we comprehended what we heard, our leadership will be appreciated and followed.

It doesn't take authority to act like a leader. Anyone can provide leadership by following along with other's concerns, complaints, conflicts and constraints. The more sense we make of other people's frustrations, the opportunities we are given to provide leadership. I think there are four things to be smart about -- that makes it easier to be a leader in any situation:

• Understanding people's situation as they see it: all its pressures, obstacles and possibilities
• Understanding people's mental state, inner conflicts, comfort zone of limitations and latest stage of character development -- in this situation
• Understanding the way change can come about, how this situation can become an initiation into greater personal power, how caterpillars become butterflies in this kind of cocoon
• Understanding the impression we make, how we come across, how we are categorized by their selective perception and categories

If you don't feel like a leader yet or didn't get that benefit from imagining how good things could be in your situation, don't worry. Perhaps that experience will help you deal with people who don't follow your lead as well. Many people will let you know they don't want to play "follow the leader" with you. Your way of leading does not appeal to them or make enough sense to them. By understanding why they take that opposing stance, you can let go of trying to lead them. Letting them show you how they make sense of their experience is a better approach than feeling diminished or invalidated by their rejection of your leadership.

People get into problems they don't know how to solve. Their way of thinking creates the problem. Their approach hides the perspective where they can see how their thinking creates the problem. They have only one way to think about their situation which precludes alternative ways to make sense of what is happening. There's no way they can "follow the leader" at this point. They have to cause trouble, oppose our leadership, or feed resistance to our objectives. They have no choice but to get our attention in this way.

They may be thinking something like the following:

• "I can't be like you, share your attitude, be as motivated as you, get excited like you, care about something a much as you do"
• "I can't handle the comparison with you, be held up to your standards, be made to feel defective, deviant or deficient by your example"
• "I can't explain why this is happening to me, say how I came into such bad luck, know what I did to deserve this abuse, or guess how this is supposed to make sense"
• "I can't talk this out, tell you what's on my mind, reveal my inner turmoil or suffer the humiliation of sharing my concerns"

A leader can offer another perspective without making them feel stupid, inept or deficient. If it matches what they've been seeing, it feels like the leader followed along with their concerns. It's only natural to join a following of that leader. It takes knowing what to say, like the "I can't" phrases I listed above. The more we understand about personality dynamics, the easier it is to make sense of people's "defiance of leadership".

You may be in a situation that is "lacking leadership". You may be feeling that things are "so bad where you work" there is no point in trying to raise people's hopes and ambitions. You may be in no mood to serve people or to create a following. That's up to you to decide. You are exercising leadership judgment to choose when to use your understanding of people for their benefit. We can over-extend ourselves if we think we should "act like a leader all the time". Sometimes it's better to act like a follower and keep our insights to ourselves. The challenge I put to you is to make up your mind about that on your own terms, not how bad the situation is or how much leadership is lacking. Leadership requires a internal locus of control. It falls into place with a transpersonal outlook.

Providing high-quality leadership is a passion of mine. That passion is infectious when people are ready to provide leadership to others. It takes passion to be effective in situations that are not providing support, encouragement and validation. Hopefully you can review all these facets of leadership and make more sense of what you've gained from your experiences. The goal here is for you to be more self aware and seeing more possibilities. Leadership begins with a change in outlook. Nobody has to go along with that except yourself.

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Tom Haskins teaches seven different college courses on leadership, strategy, management and adult learning. His expertise is used by excutives and business owners to improve their employee relations, customer rapport and competitive strategies. He can be contacted by e-mail at: haskins@ecentral.com

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