Leadership

Mud cake.  I love it.  I can though, only have a small bit.  If I try to eat what is a normal serve, I feel sick.  It is too much and too rich.  I feel the same way about the book Leadership Excellence.  I can only take little bits.  If I try to have what is normal, it is too much.
I am reading it because I brought it on my holiday.  Holidays seem to be time to read stuff.  It is what I am doing anyway.  I have brought a couple of books with me to read.  This is one of them.  Unfortunately for me, it is not something I can sit and read all day that has a beginning, middle and end and a resolution that means all live happily ever-after.
Today I sat down to read a chapter I had not read before.  I had my marker ready and was going to mark what stood out to me.  I never got that far.  Before the chapter I was going to read, was something I wanted to cover.  That was as far as I got.  I marked stuff and closed the book.  I really needed to digest and allow what I had read to settle, before I could go on.
In it, the author said something I could find really offensive, if I did not think it was true.  He said “the notion of leadership attracts the naïve.”  I only need to look at myself to know that is true.  It seems the feeling is “look at me, I must be important.  I am studying leadership.”  If “who’s naïve?” was asked, I could put my hand up.  What’s the saying “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”  I’m good at the harmless as doves part, but the wise as serpents part needs work.  In reality though, who would want to be a leader?  It is a fraught and a lonely place.  It would be easier not to be one than to be one.  But if that is what a person is supposed to be, then they will be uncomfortable not being one.  It is a big if, and not something I would want to take for myself personally.
He says in the book that Leadership would be more correctly called Followership.  He said the best leaders are the best followers.  He says that Followership is more rare than it should be.  He uses three words that pack a punch for me.  He says “obedience equals effectiveness.”
It really seems to me, that for anything but a profit motive, a leader who wants something to last beyond themselves and to nurture people, must know how to follow.  He makes the point that there are leaders that people follow because they have to, and not because they want to.  I think most of us want people to follow, because they want to, rather than have to.
Something he said that really impacted me was that, the first quality of a leader is that they have respect within the community.  Management skills, people skills, team building skills are all important, but without respect in the community, they will go nowhere beyond the current situation.
Wow, and that is not even all there was.  The thing is though, that for me, that is enough.  I need to digest a small portion if I don’t want to be sick.