I Am ... A Follower

So I tried to find a witty and insightful meme about being a follower to insert right ... here.  

However, the majority of the ones I could find were about how one should seek to be a leader as opposed to a follower.  Interesting.  If everyone is a leader, who they gonna lead?  Which conveniently, is exactly what this post is about.

I am ... a follower.

Yes, I can hear the comments already. "Mike, I just read your amazing and delightful blog 'I am ... a leader', how can you be a follower?".  Yet again, another really good question.  

Let's do this...

A good leader not only knows when they need to lead, but also when to follow.  That's some sound advice there, but I am going to change that a bit.  A good team member knows when they should lead and when they should follow.  We have all heard the expression, "too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup", that's exactly what this is about.  I don't think you need to be a leader to be a follower, but the inverse is absolutely crucial.  I think that your abilities and insights as a leader will definitely fall short if you cannot follow others.  Just like a teacher should also be a student (hmmm...foreshadowing of a future post?).

There is nothing wrong with being a follower, just ensure you are following the right leader.  The role of a follower isn't simply to blindly follow a leader or the follower in front of you.  In fact, I would suggest a follower has the responsibility to ensure their leader has their support and the most current information and insights from the follower's perspective as well as trust and loyalty in the leader.  This IS why it is critical that you are following the right person.  

I was very fortunate to have certain professional experiences early in my career.  In my profession, the majority of people are type "A" personalities and are trained from day one to lead or control a scene and patient care.  A necessity to turn chaos to calm (or at least to controlled chaos).  But what happens when there are too many medics in the kitchen trying to lead or control each other?  Well, exactly the same thing but we are not talking about soup in these situations. I have witnessed colleagues (and myself) navigate these situations excellently and sometimes not so excellently.  When things go well, it is because members of the team filled roles that needed to be filled and didn't engage in a battle for leadership.  These early experiences have helped me develop into the leader AND the follower that I am today.

Thanks for reading.

Mike