Good Life Project - Before You Lead, Follow.

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

What if being a follower and not a leader was the perfect place for you to be?We've heard so much about how we all need to lead, to found, to build, to create. From relationships to careers to business to health to life.Being a follower is, in some way, considered being "less than." Something that those who won't or can't lead surrender to.But, being a follower, at the right time, for the right reason, actually is a position of immense growth and power.Sometimes, being led is the fastest path to leading. The real art lies in knowing when to step out of the shadow and into the spotlight.That's what today's Good Life Project Riff is all about.+++ Today's Sponsors +++Today's show is supported Camp GLP. Come spend 3 1/2 days with "your people," make amazing friendships, drop the facade, reignite your vitality and learn powerful strategies and breakthrough business ideas. Learn more now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hey there, it's Jonathan with today's Good Life Project riff. And today we're talking about a topic which is kind of near and dear to me. It's the difference between following and leading. And a lot of the mythology around whether it's better to be a follower or whether it's better to be a leader. Truth is, you need to be both. It's a timing thing. Haven't we all been told that it's better to be a leader than a follower? I mean, isn't that the aspiration? We are here to lead. We have people that want and need to be led. Our job, the ultimate aspiration is that we must be leaders and to be a follower. Well, you know, that's, it's like a slam. If somebody's like, oh, you're such a follower, you know, oh yeah, you know, that's, it's like a slam. If somebody's like, Oh, you're such a follower,

you know, Oh yeah. You know, you just, you never step out. You're just, you always follow somebody else's lead. You know, being called the follower is, um, in some circles, I guess it's, it's okay, you know, but very often it's, it's used to denigrate someone, to lower them, to show that they are lesser than. And I kind of love to reclaim the term follower and following. So in my life, I have spent a lot of time following. I have spent a lot of time in a place where I was not yet prepared to lead. And I think we have this assumption that you're either a follower or you're a leader. And it's kind of a trait.

It's just kind of who you are. You know, like somebody's a leader, a quote, born leader, which honestly, rarely if in truth ever exists in nature, you know, leaders are not born, they're made, or a born follower. And they're just complete fictions. And in fact, they are not two different people. They are different stages in the development of a single person along any particular path. So rock climbing is a really easy analogy for me. I spent a chunk of years

of my life climbing, outdoor technical rock climbing. And it's a bit different than if you've ever been rock climbing inside a rock gym. The way that it works normally with indoor climbing is there are a whole bunch of different routes and artificial rock. And there's a big giant honking pulley on the top. And there's a rope that goes through that goes down, you know, down one side, and some person is holding it and goes down the other side and clamps into a harness. And as you go up, somebody else pulls you up and make sure you don't fall. In the wild, when you're climbing on natural rock, when you go above what's called one pitch, which means like that first length of a rope,

and you start to go higher and higher and higher off the ground, you climb in pairs. You have a climbing partner. And in that pair, usually you have a leader and a follower. And the leader has the job of being the first one up and figuring out the route. You're like, where are the handholds? Where are the nooks, the crannies, the cracks? And where are they going to place these little devices that expand into the rock temporarily that will sort of latch on tightly enough

so that you can then clip a rope into it. And then if you fall, those will hold you. You won't go anywhere. And as the leader goes up, they have the job of both figuring out the route and experimenting and setting these little pieces of what are called protection, and their protection from dying. So it's a pretty major job. It's a big responsibility. And to lead right off the bat is probably a pretty perilous and reckless thing to do. You need to be following for a long time before you lead to really understand. And I didn't really get this. So I was a follower for a while. And what I realized, so the followers job then, you

know, the leader will lead a pitch, they'll put in the protection, they'll figure out the route, they'll climb up, they'll sort of anchor themselves in, and then the follower starts to climb. And then, you know, as you go, the followers taking the little pieces of protection out and putting them on their belt. And you keep alternating like this, the leader leads the next pitch, and then the follower cleans and comes up. And what I learned as a follower for many years was that it is way harder to lead. When you rock climb, the climbs are rated in terms of difficulty. And what I learned was that if I was capable of following one particular level of difficulty, I could only lead something that was substantially less difficult because it took so much more cognitive and physical wherewithal to be that leader. You had to really, really develop your skills to a completely different level,

both your physical skills and your speed of processing and thinking, because your thinking is limited by your physical capacity to hang on. So what this taught me was that there's a very powerful role for both leader and follower. And I wanted to spend time being a follower because watching the leader, watching them navigate, watching them figure out these complex moves, watching how they would look for places to insert the protection, watching what happened when they made mistakes, both to them and to me, and feeling and sometimes experiencing it in painful ways. You know, it gave me a stunning appreciation of the difficulty and complexity of it. And I was able to learn a tremendous amount by following. And then slowly over time, I would start to lead little bits at a time and little bits at a time. But I was not ready to lead until I spent a very substantial amount of time following.

And the only way for me to be in a position to be qualified to step into the role of being a leader, it was not by reading books. It was not by watching movies. It was not by doing a million different things. The only way for me to be in a position to be a capable leader was to spend a very substantial amount of time being a follower. Being a follower is not a bad thing. It is an immensely powerful thing. So just change that word. Think of it as I am a student. I'm a mentee. I'm a disciple. I am somebody who is here to learn. A follower is just another name for somebody who is a devout student of whatever the particular field or craft or pursuit is. And there is grace in being that person who is in a mode of deep and sustained learning. If you say that this is nothing wrong, this isn't the place that I have to transition through. Like this is a place where I'm going to relish being in because I get to learn from a master and my aspiration may be to lead. But I can't just step up and say, well, I was born to

lead. Let me have the rope. Let me have the, this, let me have the paintbrush. Let me have the rope. Let me have the this. Let me have's organizational culture on the aspiration and the need to be a leader. You know, leaders are identified in organizations from the time they're hired. Oh, this is a high potential leader. Rather than saying, my job is to be an extraordinary student, to be a follower, a follower and somebody who is in deep learning mode. And that's a really good thing because it is my devotion to that mode, to being open, to trying, to learning, to making mistakes, to owning the fact that I do not know which way is up, down, left, or right, that will allow me to slowly make the transition to being a leader. Because it is not about whether I am a born leader or not. It is about whether I am willing

to devote myself to the role of following with enough conviction and time that I will emerge a powerful and effective leader. Think of it as stages, not traits and not birthrights. So that's where I'm at today. That's kind of what I've been playing with, following and leading. There's no one that is better or worse. There is no born part of it. It is simply a dance that we do back and forth. And the greatest leaders will at some point be followers again when they decide to move into a new domain or a new level of complexity and challenge. Even though they may be leading in one area, you will move back into that space. That's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing.

It's just a growth thing. I hope you found this interesting. As always, if you think you would have a great conversation around this, share this with somebody. Ideas are great, but conversations are where we change and the world changes with us. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.