Stop! Stop trying so hard to lead when you first must follow.

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. —Aristotle

Jesus selects 12 men out of the multitudes that would come to follow him for three years. He didn’t lure them with the “leadership carrot,” a position or power to entice or goad them into following. He simply said, “Come, follow me.”

Notice, He didn’t say, “come, lead me” or “come, lead with me.” You know what? They followed!

What kind of follower are you?

Ever tried to motivate, guide, or lead a group, your family, maybe even your spouse unsuccessfully? Of course! People are by nature  rebellious, stubborn and self-willed. The notion that everyone can be a leader is misleading.

If everyone is a leader, then who is following? Moreover, who then is following whom? All you create is a recipe for confusion, mismanagement and chaotic administration when you try to reinforce that everyone is a leader.

Everyone needs to practice personal responsibility and discipline, but they should not be confused with possessing leadership. These practices, of course are utilized by effective leaders, but they are also qualities of effective human beings on planet earth. We need to stop confusing personal responsibility with the ability to lead people.

Everyone is a follower. Ouch! Yes, everyone is following someone or something, even if it is just themselves.

I recently met with Jimmy Collins (former President & COO of Chick-fil-A, Inc. and author of the book Creative Followership*) who said one of the hardest lessons he learned was around submissiveness. Submissiveness is absolutely necessary for any follower. Marriages fail, partnerships end, and organizations splinter because the involved parties don’t grasp Paul’s commison to “submit yourselves one to another” (Ephesians 5:21). Submission is the yielding of your will and the subjecting of yourself under authority. Jimmy Collins understood that, inorder to serve his organization best, he would submit himself to the founder Truett Cathy even when and if he didn’t agree. It is a powerful statement in the organization when the top-level leaders submit to one another. These lessons  deeply engrain and reinfornce a humility, a submissiveness in the organization that strengthens bonds and stabilizes the entire organization.

3 Lessons for About Following

1-True Following Requires Submission. It is one of the hardest lessons, because most of us by nature don’t like submitting. Submission requires trust, patience, and often, waiting.

2-True Following is not Shadowing. Shadowing gives the appearance of following, but in actuality, is really an observing role collects information or provides critique (it’s not wrong, it just isn’t following). Shadowers have a tendency to disappear or take off. Their commitment is not to the organization, but often to themselves or their own motives.

3-The Best Leaders Learned How to Follow Well. The best leaders have an examinable track record of experience that molds them into the leaders they become, often because they followed lesser-known, but equally outstanding leaders themselves. Leaders don’t hatch out of eggs, they are born with natural ability and are shaped through experience and formation. The best leaders are great followers, but very few followers actually become the best leaders.

There is a mirage in leadership. There is a myth existing in our culture that leadership is the great “cure-all”/panacea. Accordingly, if our organizations focus on building better leaders, then the whole organization will reap positive rewards. So, we see Fortune 500 companies swap CEO’s almost annually (an exaggeration), marriages swap spouses, and churches change pastors, because they aren’t getting the right results–because they don’t have the right leader. Maybe, in fact, they have a follower problem or the leader has a calling problem (more on this in a future blog).

If organizations, families, teams, departments, and ministries focused more internally on growing and developing stronger followers, then the by-product would be greater  synchronicity and bonding in the organization. Organizations, teams, families, etc. fray and un-bond when they are pulled (by leadership forces) in differing directions. The vision can be clear, the goals can be set, but when there are too many voices out of sync, followers become confused, frustrated and abandon ship (maybe not with their bodies, but with their hearts).

Everyone follows. Embrace your stations in life where there is clarity to follow. If you are leading people, remember who it is you are following and those who follow you.

Remember, Jesus said, “come follow me” (Matthew4:19). He did not say, “come lead me.”

*follow Jimmy Collins at his blog www.creativefollowership.com or on Twitter at @TheJimmyCollins