Followers change things. Leaders don’t.

Take a deep breath. Please, I mean it.

It should be a really deep one as you need to imagine you are going under a large breaking wave. The wave and its washing machine turbulence could keep you under for a few more seconds than is comfortable. Right at this moment you have an abundant supply of oxygen in your lungs and you may even enjoy the feeling of being at the mercy of the wave as it moves your limbs where it will. You give up control for a while, your chest may start to burn a little and as you break the surface into the calm after the chaos, you suck in another huge gulp of life-giving oxygen.

But wait. Something is missing. You have done something equally important in this time to stay alive. You have done something to provide the space for the next breath.

You have exhaled.

Breathing out empties the lungs of dangerously high levels of Carbon Dioxide and clears the system for the next inhalation. It is not possible to live on the in breath alone and we need both to continue the art of living. While breathing in, the oxygen gives life. While breathing out, the absence of Carbon Dioxide sustains life.

While we lead with an inhalation, what follows is an exhalation, and we live in this extraordinary polarity eight million times in a single year. Including those moments which take our breath away.

In. Out. In. Out…Lead. Follow. Lead. Follow…

We can’t have one without the other. While Leadership might be the inspirational inhalation, the operational work happens in the outbreath. What leads gives life. What follows keeps you alive.

It seems out of kilter then that according to Barbara Kellerman in her book, “The End of Leadership”, that globally somewhere close to sixty billion dollars per annum is spent on Leadership development, and perhaps zero is spent on how to be a great follower. That is akin to only taking in oxygen, and perfecting the ways of doing this. Maybe we invest in workshops on where to find better oxygen, how to master the dealings of the diaphragm and techniques for keeping the respiratory cavities clean for maximum efficiencies.

We love the idea of a purer, leading inbreath, but are we neglecting the impact of the following outbreath?

Inbreath is in. Outbreath is out. Welcome in. Keep out.

The world is littered with the hot air of great gasps of massive ideas which lie buried in the ash heap of apathy. Leaders who move in with promises of blue sky breathing are left aghast as the same air gets stale and stifled in the corporate corridors of competition and are dispatched by the disengaged.

But, the world is also decorated with examples of followers who have used the oxygen of ideas, handled the toxicity around them and built great relationships with their customers which have kept the company alive.

Of course, not all followers are the same as a simple exhalation. Some are passive, others show passion. Some arrive with a fully charged battery, others only with parasitic terminals searching for a charge from someone else, and perhaps part of the Leaders inbreath is to see who is engaged in the uptake.

It is never the first snow flake which breaks the branch and a flood doesn’t happen with a rain drop of one. It is the cumulative weight of the following rest which effects the change.

The leader says wear a mask. It is the citizens who decide whether the spread of the virus is stemmed or not.

There is a beautiful poem by Marge Piercy called the “Low Road.” In it, I think she magnificently portrays the power which lies in the collective, and that very collective is the life blood and the oxygen of leadership.

Low Road

What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set you up, they can bust you, they can break your fingers, they can burn your brain with electricity, blur you with drugs till you can't walk, can't remember, they can take your child, wall up your lover. They can do anything you can't stop them from doing. How can you stop them? Alone, you can fight, you can refuse, you can take what revenge you can but they roll over you.

But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob, a snake-dancing file can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. With four you can play bridge and start an organization. With six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; ten thousand, power and your own paper; a hundred thousand, your own media; ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again and they said no, it starts when you say We and know you who you mean, and each day you mean one more.

Marge Piercy

All the world’s great challenges will not be solved by leaders alone. They will change when Followers choose to act.

Just like the polar opposites of the two acts of breathing, we need both Leadership and Followership to survive. We inhale and exhale. We lead and we follow – often in the same short breath of any slice of life.

Followers change things. Leaders don’t.

I wonder if I could take in the possible and the positive, and dispel the destructive. When did I follow with all the charge in my battery and the air in my lungs? It was perhaps only at those times when anything really changed.

Breathe out…

Steve Hall