Alpha Framing: Leaders and Followers

LaylaBird

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

We’ve all heard this bit of wisdom from Thomas Paine before. Typically, you’ll find it used by people as an excuse to push people out of the way, but never mind that; for now, let’s just consider what it means. Are those really the only options available to us? Probably not. There’s the whole idea of negotiation to consider. Or forceful retribution. After all, if we let everyone lead whatever lives they wanted, choosing either to follow their lead or ignore it, we’d have a pretty terrible world on our hands, wouldn’t we?

But when it comes to our daily lives, and the aspirations we have for them, it really does seem to boil down to these three options. Today, I’m going to be confining myself to the first two, because the third was probably just tacked on to prove a point.

To lead, or to follow? That’s the choice each of us face when it comes to our adult lives. I mean, we have no choice but to follow when we’re children. And if you believe the common American cliché, you have no choice but to lead when you’re an adult. This is the land of the free, and we don’t follow anyone.

Doing this can lead to some pretty unrealistic expectations, though. It takes a certain kind of person to be an effective leader, and if the skills needed to become a leader were easy to come by, then I wouldn’t be here talking about it. We’d all be leaders, trail-blazers, and pioneers, and none of us would have time to read advice columns because we don’t need advice!

Life has never been that cut-and-dry.

You might be wondering, at this point, just what kind of person makes those effective leaders? What skills are necessary to become one? How can you, or I, tell who a good leader is? And how can a follower of one of these good leaders benefit from that knowledge, and help things along?

Let’s start with the simple stuff: a leader has to be courageous. This one seems obvious, but consider something for a moment, if you would. We typically misunderstand the meaning of courage. We correlate courage with fearlessness, but that has a nasty little habit of turning into a mortal sin in effective leadership: recklessness.

Consider an alternative idea, if you will. Courage is the ability to use fear effectively; that is to say, using the fear that we all feel to sharpen the senses. Fear shows us where our weaknesses are, and if we know how to examine it, that’s an invaluable tool.

Of course, examining our own fears is a learned skill all its own, and that’s another facet of being a leader: the ability to examine. I don’t mean just observing. A keen understanding of psychology is important here. A good leader has to understand people. Particularly important is knowing and understanding the people that follow him or her. We all have specialties, things which we’re best at doing, and most enthusiastic about doing.

I’m thinking mostly about management positions, but this ability is important in any aspect of social interaction, whether it’s work, politics, academics, or just daily life. If you know what people are good at doing, and what they enjoy doing, then you can delegate parts of a project to those best suited to completing them to the highest degree of efficiency and ensure the best results.

Typically we think of leaders as being lone wolf types; they’re fiercely independent, and this is why they aren’t working for anyone else, or following another’s example. However, we human beings are a social species at heart, and no truly successful enterprise in today’s global society can work at its best if there’s only one person involved.

A good leader needs good followers. As I mentioned before, though, there’s a social narrative out there, in the United States particularly, that says you’re not done until you’re sitting in the Big Chair. We have national pride, after all, and nothing less than the biggest, best, most powerful, is acceptable.

This is an antiquated idea at best, and a dangerous one. Some of us happen to shine as backup. Officers. First lieutenants. There are a number of metaphors to use, but the idea is that a good leader needs trustworthy, dependable people on whom he or she can rely. Everybody has some level of support. Family, friends, coworkers, classmates. The same holds true for those “lone wolf” types with their eyes toward the future.

By this point you might be asking, what makes a good follower? There are a few things to consider: those same traits I talked about before fit here as well. Courage, empathy, understanding. However, where a leader must be counted on to blaze ahead and envision the future, typically a follower will be watching what the leader does with an eye toward the presence. Those unforeseen complications that always arise from any risky enterprise are the chief domain of a follower.

They say that a talented mind can hit the target no one else can hit, but that a true genius, a real visionary, hits a target no one else can see. This is the realm of the leader. The follower supplies the bow, the arrow, readies the targets, works the crowd. It might seem like thankless work, and indeed this is a common idea; that’s why following has such a bad rap. However, it’s vital work, necessary for any real innovation; any solid work at all requires a team effort, and the entire time has to work harmoniously for it to happen. A team isn’t comprised of a multi-headed hydra, with six or seven Alpha types all vying for control, biting and snapping and gnashing at each other. That's a recipe for rampant disaster.

A good team is comprised of dedicated, passionate people, each bringing their collective skills together toward a common goal. A good team needs a manager to oversee the work, settle disputes, ensure that the team can do its job without unnecessary interference; and to keep everyone on task if sight of the final vision gets skewed somewhere along the lines.

That manager is where our leader comes back in. If the leader is a metaphorical head, a governing mind, then the followers are the body. A body can’t do without a head, but neither can a head do much of anything without the body.

So if you’re a leader, make sure you surround yourself with an effective, efficient body which will support you. And if you’re a follower, find a leader with a vision you can get behind, someone who understands your skill set and can ensure that your work is appreciated and utilized effectively. Most importantly, keep this in mind: neither of you can settle for anything but the best.