Everybody Follows Somebody.

It’s a fact of life. Everybody follows somebody. We are all followers, but I believe that we are also all leaders. We each have a personal and professional call to leadership. Everyone will find yourself leading others. You’ll be leading your family, friends, peer group or your “tribe.” You will be leading others in your community, organizations, at work and in your career as you progress towards success. You will be leading others.

Leaders and followers are unquestionably linked. They don’t exist without the other. A leader must have people who are willing to follow their leadership. As a follower, for the most part, you get to choose what leaders you will follow. That is if you are an active participant in the process. To many people just don’t get this. Because everyone is following someone you should be selecting those whom you follow. If you don’t I guarantee that someone will choose for you.

As a youth speaker I tell this to students all the time and it just rubes them the wrong way. It seems to go against everything they are trying to do in their lives. They desperately what to gain their independence and stop following others. They want to get out from under others telling them what to do, when to do it, who do to it with. They’re seeking every opportunity to make decisions for themselves. Then along comes some crazy speaker to suggest they give all that up, and this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Students view independence as being able to do what every they want, when every they want, with whomever they like, without having to ask permission and often without consequences. Many adults think the very same thing. But it just isn’t reality.

True independence is about being able to make quality choices that lead to more quality choices.  The number one factor in making quality choice is experience not independence.

We tend to place such great emphasis upon leadership, and rightly so. We have a leadership gap that must be filled by our students. However, we must also teach the very fist and basic steps of what it means to be a leader.  This process starts buy understanding you must first come under command before you can truly learn to take command of yourself or others.

This concept is the bases for my Keynote Speech B.A.S.I.C. Student Leadership where I teach students that they must first learn to come under command before they can be in command.

Here is a great article by Tim Elmore http://growingleaders.com/blog/first-lesson-leaders-learn/ about being a follower first.

Check it out and let me know what you think.