First, watch this video of the shirtless dancing guy. It’s essential to my thesis here.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way, here are a few quotes from the narrator of that video:
- It’s not about the leader
- The leader embraces [the first follower] as an equal
- There is no movement without the first follower
- You must be easy to follow
- Being the first follower is an underappreciated form of leadership
- Be public
- Now here come 2 more, then three more. Now we’ve got momentum
I first saw this video about two years ago. And I’ve been thinking about how the message it conveys applies to our two presidential candidates. For Obama (and other leaders like him), I often feel like he is the catalyst, but it is not about him. It’s about us. It’s a version of Bill Clinton who said, “I feel your pain.” And we believed it. It’s satisfying to follow a person like that because they make us feel special, valuable and necessary. Just him being the president makes me want to do more and be more involved. Look at the crowd sizes at Obama's stump speeches. To this day, he's still very much the leader with amazing amounts of followers.
In contrast is a leader like Mitt Romney. As we’re well aware, there are more people who disapprove of him than approve. What kind of leader is that? And who are his followers? Does he make you feel equal, special, or included? Does he make you feel welcome? From my perspective, he isn’t a person I could rally behind. I really feel that his motivation to be president is not about lifting or inspiring the masses, but because he simply wants to be president. Which is why he’s not connecting with people. It’s about him, not us. Although his crowd sizes have increased, they are nowhere near the levels of Obama. Romney simply doesn't inspire his followers.
Of course, leadership and followership is not just about political leaders. I’ve noticed the same kind of crowd behavior right here on Daily Kos. Now, this could simply be me, but I notice that when going down the right side of the Daily Kos front page, and I get to the “Recent Diaries” section, I click on the diaries with the most comments and/or recommendations first. I’m blindly following those readers before me who liked the post enough to leave a comment and/or a recommendation. Further, once the comment list gets sufficiently long (or the recommendations), the diary acquires a life of its own. More and more people join the conversation. This is a blog version of a "movement."
I don’t know if there is a trick to having followers. Clearly, from the video, you don’t have to fit into some predetermined narrative of what a leader should look or act like. This guy was nearly naked and acting the fool. Here on Daily Kos, you don’t even need to have spell checked your diary to be followed. You do need to be courageous enough to post something and lucky enough that it be found in the first few minutes. And you need a reader to be bold enough, when there are no recs or comments to leave one of their own.