It used to be that people who held leadership roles were often the most educated, skilled, or experienced of a group. The group trusted that person’s judgement because of his or her knowledge, skill and experience. The better the leader”s ability to translate his or her background into vision and success, the more impressive the results the group could achieve. Look back in history at societies and institutions before mass education and you can find thousands of examples.

Something interesting has happened in our lifetime though. With the advent of mass education, increased specialization and exploding life complexity, followership has become much more an active choice – a temporary assigning of trust – and much less a factor of “I don’t know so I will follow someone who does”. I and millions like me are fully capable of managing and leading ourselves in most everything that comes our way … if we do not know something, our education has prepared us to find it out and apply it. 

I just don’t have the time. Therefore I grant a limited amount of trust to those who seem to best fit into leadership roles in the areas where I would prefer someone else focus their efforts to organize my activities. That person shares enough of my viewpoints to give me comfort that his/her future actions will be consistent with what I desire. He or she should have a record of success in similar roles with like groups or his/her personal life. And he or she must continue to operate at roughly that level or above to sustain my trust. If these criteria are not met, I walk. I delegate my trust to another person.

This applies to most activities in my life, and in the lives of the modern knowledge worker or other worker in an industrialized country. It demonstrates the changed nature of the roles of leader and follower that has recently come to dominate our political and business landscapes. A leader who does not recognize this emerging fact is often not a leader for long.

I’ll elaborate more in my future posts … soon.