Being A Good Follower

Leaders should become comfortable with accepting the reality that they don’t need to be the smartest person in the room to effectively lead others. Another key principle to successfully managing an ever-changing team dynamic is accepting the fact that you need to be a good follower in order to be an effective leader. Perhaps you have worked on teams where one of the members has experience leading other teams and insists on using that experience to rationalize their efforts to continually point out how they’d run meetings or come to make decisions. While they might be thinking that they are helping others to become better leaders by imparting some of their experiences, the reality is that they are simply trying to be another leader at the table by focusing more on what works for them than on understanding what works for the team. This is why so many of today’s successful leaders not only encourage delegation of key projects and decisions, but why they also make a habit of letting others lead the teams they serve on. They understand that to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower by putting the needs of those you serve ahead of your own interests.