Yes, leading. And, following.
Learning when to step up and lead and when to step back and support the cause from behind is arguably more important than leadership itself.
“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” - Benjamin Disraeli
My mother is the most humble person I know. She’s also the strongest person I know. She is the single greatest check on my ego, and for that I am deeply grateful. I remember one evening I came home from an FFA conference and I was so excited about all the leadership skills I had learned. My mother’s response to my excitement wasn’t the “great job sweetie I’m proud of you” that I thought I deserved.
“Are you sure it’s a good thing if everyone tries to be a leader all the time?”
Have y’all ever put out a fire by dousing the flames with a bucket of water? I felt like the flame, my mother’s words were the bucket of water, and I was left feeling like a sad pile of damp ashes. And then, I realized that she wasn’t trying to crush my dreams. She had a point, a genuine thought worth considering, and I would do well to consider it.
Let’s get some definitions out of the way so we know we’re talking about the same things here. A leader is defined by dictionary.com as the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country. A follower is an adherent or devotee of a particular person, cause, or activity. They seem pretty mutually exclusive, but let’s take a deeper look. I think we can learn to ebb and flow between one and the other.
The summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I found myself at Illinois FFA Leadership Camp… and somewhat against my will. In a weak moment, my advisor had talked me into signing up. On the bus ride down to Monticello, Illinois, I was having major feelings of regret. Windows down, sitting towards the back of a school bus packed full of people who I hardly knew, on my way to a whole WEEK of what I considered near torture—living in cabins with strangers, talking to people for more than three seconds of a “hello,” and playing sports. I considered disappearing on the other side of the Dairy Queen we had stopped at for lunch and just walking home. But, I didn’t want to walk that far, so I got back on the bus. I’m glad I did. By the end of the week, I had some new best friends, new favorite FFA memories, and I had witnessed firsthand what it looked like for one person to effortlessly be both a leader and a follower.
Miss Stephanie was the adult leader in my small group, a young ag teacher who served as a resource for the student leader in the group. Most of our group experiences were facilitated by that student leader, and she was good at what she did. Yet, there were moments when Miss Stephanie stepped in to provide discipline and guidance. Somehow, she did it without stepping on the toes of our student leader. That’s hard to do, because usually if we lead at all we think we should lead the whole time.
I think Miss Stephanie recognized that, in general, two things should be true before we step up and lead in any given moment.
1) There is an unfilled need.
Both good leaders and followers are hyper-aware of their surroundings. When we’re in a group setting and see a need going unfilled, it’s likely time to start preparing to step up and fill it. Yet, we still don’t want to jump in right away, because there might be someone else who is better equipped to do so. If I attempt to fill a need to quickly, I may be taking an opportunity where someone else could have better filled it. Saying “yes” to everything isn’t always the best way to serve.
2) I am uniquely positioned to fill that need.
If the unfilled need is someone to hop up on stage and sing a camp song, and I’ve never heard a camp song in my entire life, that’s probably not the time for me to lead. My role here would be best suited to hyping up the crowd who is also probably learning, too. But, maybe I’m working on a group problem about the dairy industry and I’m the only member with expertise in that area; now, it’s my turn to shift from follower to leader. We’re not always in such a clear cut scenario so communication and discernment will be our best friends in those cases.
Regardless of whether we are leading or following, we should all be oriented in the same direction as a group. In a well-organized group, we’re united around a common cause, not the leader themselves. That makes the job of a follower as important as that of the leader; with no followers, a leader is “just taking a walk,” as John Maxwell says. A good leader listens to the people, becoming in a sense a follower, before shifting back to leader as they propel the entire group towards the appropriate action that results from listening to the group. This is what Miss Stephanie did. She was aware of her surroundings, saw when a need was going unfilled that she was uniquely positioned to fill (often as the adult in the group her voice was more likely to be taken seriously), and then stepped up to fill it. But as soon as she saw her work in that role was finished, she stepped back down and joined our group as a team member in flag football or sat next to us as we attempted to create origami masterpieces. Through it all, our whole group was united around the cause of becoming closer as a group and learning new ways to serve people, not the specific person leading our group.
My mom was right (our moms usually are, let’s be real) for raising the question about how much leadership is too much leadership. If we find ourselves often propelled to the role of leader, are we seeking to also follow the people we serve? If we tend to be a follower, are we properly supporting our leader and the cause we all follow? As a leader, are we stepping up too much because we don’t trust others’ abilities to lead, too? Maybe we follow because we’re afraid to step up. I struggle to know when to step up and when to support from behind. When in doubt, our best bet is to be aware of our surroundings, always offer to help (but not get offended if it’s not accepted), and remember that regardless of our role, leader or follower, our job is to serve the people around us.
Is there an area in your life that you are leading too much, too often? What will you do to learn to follow, too? Share your thoughts in the comments or on social media by tagging @miriamrosah and @nffaevp and using the hashtags #EmbracingComplexity and #FFA21.