What can Geese teach us about Leadership and Followership?
Can followers make a leader?
I play many leadership roles and I also have had many opportunities to observe and study the dynamics of leadership.
What I have concluded is that there is a curious combination of leadership and followership that rarely occurs, but when it does, the outcomes are nothing short of extraordinary. No one person is the complete package, but when a visionary and compassionate leader is backed by followers who see the vision as greater than any one individual, miracles literally happen.
The truth is that we are all leaders even when we may not be at the helm of things. I remember a work situation from a while back. I was the new kid on the block and the work environment was pretty toxic. It seemed like the favorite past time for the majority of the employees was to talk about and criticize our boss. Every perceived flaw of his was magnified and dissected ad nauseum. Without even meaning to, I immediately fell into the same pattern. We all bonded over our collective discontent with our boss.
But one day as I was getting ready for work, I heard Joyce Meyer preaching and she proposed what seemed like a novel idea at the time. What if instead of complaining about your boss, you chose instead to pray for them? What if you started working on making your boss excel, rather than plotting his or her downfall? Wow, what a concept!!!
I decided then and there, never to speak ill of my boss again publicly, in private and even in my head. I began to pray for and advocate for him. In barely a week, my co-workers started to notice that I had great “favor” with our boss. They would often ask me to go in and talk to him about things he had rejected for years. Each time, I would come back with a positive response from him. No one was more astonished than I was.
Our boss became more open to everyone. The atmosphere lightened in our office and we saw more successes. I sought the reason for this turn around. It was simple. When I made the decision not to criticize. but to pray for him, others noticed and gradually, most of us stopped looking for the bad in him. As we became more positive to him, he responded in kind. As we expressed our confidence in him, it emboldened him to do his job even better. We were all winners as a result.
This is a lesson that geese mastered from the beginning of time. They’ve been demonstrating how to be good leaders and followers for all to see and learn.
Enjoy the video about geese and be sure to act on and share these lessons with others.
Do you have a leader with whom you are currently discontent? Try praying for them and “honking” positively instead of negatively. Stay the course.
For more inspirational life lessons, be sure to visit www.xtraordinaryyou,com
