Followers are not tools of a leader

Hi everyone, 

I’m sorry for not having posted anything here for a few weeks. I’ve been swamped with work related to my upcoming book (in Swedish) about the art of following. 

Anyway, I thought I’d take a break from everything and quickly post a short video about something I find very important. 

I sometimes hear people refer to followers as tools. Usually, the person saying this believes that leaders function as some kind of decision-maker. That the leader has a plan and will then use the followers to ensure the plan is successful.

According to this view, followers are nothing but puppets, controlled by a single individual. But as we’ve discussed before, people follow leaders when they want to achieve something.

In other words, we choose to follow someone when we believe this person can take us one step closer to our goal.

This means that followers are decision-makers. After all, they decide who they want to follow and when. And they use leaders to help them achieve their goals.

In other words, followers are not tools – but leaders are.