Start Following

I have a pastor friend who used to say something so interesting to me. "The Church needs better followers, not more leaders." This is ironic because, when he said this to me, we were both working for a church who called its members Fearless Followers but had a vision focused on developing leaders. Brian and I often struggled with this paradox.

Brian's statement seems true for all organizations - not just churches:

Everyone wants to be a leader. No one wants to be a follower.

It's not sexy to be following in the back of the room while the person in the front of the room is getting all the attention. It's no fun to follow someone else's agenda, especially when we have our own plans. No one wants to take direction. Even if a follower's great idea makes it passed the gatekeepers, they often believe leaders are deaf to any solutions to which they cannot directly take credit.

Has anyone ever complimented a "natural born follower"?

Are there great tomes of self help books about becoming the next great follower?

Are there Global Followership Summits?

The best leaders I know don't seem to intentionally do a lot of the things that best leaders are supposed to do. The best leaders I know don't seem to know they were leaders... or assume that they are actually leading. The best leaders I know don't need a book to tell them how to be the best leaders I know.

I would follow my friend Bob on an expedition to Mars if he told me he was going. He is the best leader I know. And he is probably shaking his head at the content of this post so far. But he is a perfect example of what I am trying to say. Being known as a leader is not his goal. He doesn't assume his position equals leadership. He is a servant. And above all else, he seems more interested in being a follower.

The best leader I know is actually a follower.

So, I started thinking again about what Brian said about leaders and followers after reading another self-help leadership book recently. These books are good at laying out roadmaps to the Land of Awesome. They feature inspiring stories of success. They give practical advice; a step-by-step process toward discovering purpose.

This book, and others like it, speak to our desire to be great leaders, but they ignore what most of us really need: to learn how to be great followers.

I'm not downplaying leadership. We need good leaders. Good leaders need books and other resources to train and inspire them. We need more leaders like my friend Bob. Leadership is important.

What I'm trying to say, and what I think Brian is trying to say, is that if we spent as much time learning to be good followers as we did learning to be good leaders, the places we live, work, worship and play would have more, and more effective, leaders leading.

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Who are you leading? More importantly, who are you following?