Follow before you Lead

Most people in this world would love to stand in the foregrounds and be a leader, but many are not willing to submit and follow a leader first. In this decade where people are almost forced to believe that being a leader is the only way to a satisfied life, we need people to first stay humble, get a mentor, follow them, learn the way, and THEN stand up and lead.

In this post, I’m going to be going through 3 reasons why we all should follow before we lead.

Young People usually make Dumb Decisions

Being decisive is one of the most important qualities that a leader has to possess in order to uphold the success of the group. As a young guy, you are not going to be able to make quick decisions that are good at the same time. Decision making is a skill that is developed through experience. This experience usually can be a set of good decisions or bad decisions that you’ve made in the past or that you’ve seen other leaders make.

For this reason, it’s better to first just be a follower and let the leader be the one who makes the decisions. Eventually, we do have to start taking responsibility for some decisions. An example of where it would be better to delegate the responsibility of decision making to an expert first is setting up a workout routine in the gym. Like most people, at first, you might not know what is the best set of workouts to do in the gym. So it’s better to just do what the trainer tells you to, instead of messing things up and breaking a leg.

You Learn How to Lead by Following

No person is born a leader. All leaders were influenced by a leader role model that they knew, on whom they held a high view of. This means that leadership itself is something that has to be learned from a leader. So before you go about leading a team, you have to first join as a member of a team and follow the leader.

An example of this would be entrepreneurship. Most people believe that it’s so much cooler to start your own company than to work for one. The truth is, it is. But the problem is that most people are not willing to do the work of first gaining capital in order to ensure sustainability. You don’t need billions of dollars on the bank for that, but you do need to have a specific set of skills and qualities that in order to run a company. These skills and qualities can only be learned when you first get exposed to an existing process in a successful company.

Good Leadership is founded on Humility

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
Philippians 2:3 (King James Version)

One of the principle things that any good leader possesses is humility. Esteeming others better than themselves. It takes a huge amount of humility to start from scratch and follow someone instead of acting as if you know what you’re doing. Good leaders have that. This makes them willing to get in the trenches and help people who are lower than where they at because they understand that they themselves are at that level only because someone else was willing to help them.

Also, it is important to realize the fact that at the end of the day, you can never lead in all areas of life. Sometimes you just have to be willing to follow someone else who is doing a better job than you in that area.