DailyJim: Leading and following at the same time

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Thursday, June 13th, 2024. I'm just a few minutes after here in Germany, Northwest Germany. And I want to talk about, leadership, followership, and how we're connected in a chain. Let me just put it that way. And the idea about this is emotional leadership, emotional fathership, and how sometimes we think that they're independent, that our behaviors don't impact other people in many different ways. You do you and I'll do me and that's fine. I'm thinking, but we're connected. How you behave impacts me. How I behave impacts you. It impacts other people. people, this idea that we're free-floating humans not connected to each other doesn't seem to work in my mind. Often I think it's more like we are all holding each other's hands, and if I go left, I pull you left. And pulling you left pulls the person that you're holding onto with your right hand to your left as well. Or if I'm in the middle and somebody pulls me left, that means I pull you left as well. Unless I fight against that, and then maybe we can pull to the right. Now we're engaged in almost a tug of war, two people pulling at the same arm and going in different directions. Now, it also can make sense as a long, we're all holding onto the same rope, very long rope. And if one person who's very strong pulls us to the right, if we all hold onto the rope, we often go with that person. Now we can fight against it, but now we are pulling against that person. And if we're not strong enough, maybe we don't move that person. But if we are at the end of the rope and we're very strong, we pull and we move the people in the middle. These people have to decide which way are they going. Are they going right or left? And maybe there's a tension.

And I think this happens so often when it comes to emotions and we don't realize it. Maybe we focus so much on being the follower of, well, I will treat them how they treat me.

Okay. So in other words, if they treat me poorly, well, I will treat them poorly, which means, okay, maybe they pull to the left. Well, I will go left as well. If what was the phrase, I think Michelle Obama said, if they go low, we go high. But this is more like the followership mentality would be. If they go low, then I also go low. If they go high, I go high. If they love me, then I love them. If they hate me, then I hate them. If they don't care about me, then I don't care about them. And I think this is an attitude many of us take, kind of the followership idea that they go first and I respond to what they do. They are taking the lead. They are making the decisions. I am just doing whatever decision they make. I find that this attitude doesn't have much agency. And I think it also doesn't recognize that we are also holding on to other people in our lives. So, for example, if there's one person in my life who starts to become more depressed, and I will, well, they're depressed, and so therefore I will become depressed.

Me becoming depressed doesn't just impact the other person in my life. It impacts a lot of other people in my life, and I may pull other people into that depression because other people may say, well, if he's depressed, then I'll be depressed. Or maybe depressed is not the word that resonates with a lot of people. Maybe one person says, you know, if I'm doing drugs, if I do drugs, then I'll do drugs if he does drugs, which is frankly the essence of so much peer pressure and not only young age, adolescence, but also as adults. Like how often is it the person has a beer? Well, if they have a beer, I'll have a beer. Instead of realizing, okay, if the one person has a beer, say person A has a beer, then person B says, okay, I'll have a beer if person A has a beer. But they don't realize that other people like C, D, and E may be saying, well, I will have a beer if person B has a beer.

So person B doesn't realize that they are also making a decision that leads other people into to other decisions. And I think this is kind of the chain connectedness that I think a lot of us don't realize is that the decisions we make in our lives impact other people. Even if we're making those decisions in response to somebody, it's still a decision. If somebody starts and punches me in the face, I still have a decision. Do I punch them in the face? Instead of going, well, Well, they started it. I can choose. Do I punch? Because if I punch, maybe there are other people saying, well, if he punches, now I'm going to punch. And so it can trigger the chain reaction from people who are in this following mindset.

And the people in the following mindset don't realize that they're leading other people into behaviors who are also in the following mindset. Well, I'm just going to do what he does. Yeah. Not realizing that other people are saying, well, I'm just going to do what he does. I don't know if this makes sense. It might make better sense if I draw it out on a map or something. But this idea that if we're only focused on following, and I've heard this so much in terms of conflict resolution, in terms of relationships, in terms of decision making in organizations. Organizations or i'm just waiting for them to make a decision to go first and then i'll do what they do or i'll make my decision based on what they do why why don't you make a decision first why don't you look at yourself as the agent who may be leading other people in their decisions because so many of us seem to be waiting on the other person to go first and then we'll do often what they do just in response.

And so I'm just kind of rambling today a little bit about this because I think I feel sad and frustrated when I see people only focused on the following aspect of it and not focused on the leading aspect of it. Because I think it's almost always both. I am responding to somebody else's behavior And I am also leading somebody else's behavior. I am also initiating behavior for somebody else, for them to respond to. And so it's both and. It's me both going second and going first. If you look, I mean, an example is just looking at almost any conflict that happens at the global stage. How many of these conflicts just started today or just started last week? I mean, the conflict in the Middle East, maybe we can go back 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years. I was talking with somebody here on this project who's from the Middle East. And I was like, man, the problem in Israel and Palestine, does this go back to Babylon? Like, how far back do we have to go to see who started the fight? Because people are starting and responding. It's a both, both and. And so I think when it comes to emotional interactions, a lot of times, I will feel this way if they feel that way first. I'll say i love you if they say i love you first well somebody's gotta start and then after the other person goes somebody has to make the decision to respond to go second but also that second that response is leading other people into behavior so yeah i'm definitely rambling on this i hope people understand this concept if not i'd love to talk more about it on jim and friends join the forum we can chat there what i like about it is that it's a chat but it's That's also long-term posting, so it's not so bad. But anyways, I'll talk with you all next week. I hope you have a good one. Talk to you soon. Bye.