Gender: Female
Member Since: January 4, 2012
Answers: 235
Last Update: November 12, 2015
Visitors: 11400
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I'm eighteen years old, and I'm basically a follower. If real life were a video game, I'd totally be a support character. I'm very good at being backup, being there for people and sacrificing my own wants or needs for theirs. I'm also very good at following orders and respecting seniority. I have been my entire life. I always think about other people first. I follow people the majority of the time. If my friends and I, say, go to the mall or something, I prefer following behind them. I don't know why, it's just how I am!
It's not to say I can't lead. I guess I'm sort of a lazy leader, in a way. If a situation arises where there are all followers amongst us, I'll take the lead if I have to. But if anyone else wants to lead I'll follow them.
A follower is always described negatively... Is it really all that bad to be a follower? I mean, without us, leaders would have no one to LEAD, right? Thanks for your time. :D (link)
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Like the other columnists said, being a follower is usually perceived negatively. My opinion is that there are the natural born leaders and natural born followers. It works with the way some people's personalities are. Some people are just better at leading people than others.
However, that doesn't make being a follower a bad thing. Like you said, leaders need followers. I'm going to give you an example of how important followers are. I attended a leadership seminar recently where we watched a video. Basically, it started out with one guy dancing crazily by himself while everybody looked at him like he was weird. But one person in the crowd took a chance and got up there and danced with him. The audience saw this and eventually more people followed until almost everybody was dancing. The important part to this story is that usually a leader starts out as somebody with a crazy or different idea/approach and that first follower is the catalyst in the situation. This showed me how important followers (mainly the first follower) really are to leadership.
So back to my opinion on this. As I was saying leadership is built upon the first follower (and the next few). I don't think being a follower is bad unless you are only following because everybody else is doing it. Now if you do have that problem, I would advise to take more of an initiative. This doesn't mean that you should go out and change yourself to be a leader unless you are comfortable with it; I mean that you should try to be one of those first followers. Sorry if this was kind of confusing and long, but I hope it helped. Good luck with everything!
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Rating: 5
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Thank you very much! I liked your example, it makes sense and I can relate to it. Thanks again, you helped a lot! :DD!
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