Follow the Leader:
Why such an Overemphasis on Leadership?



Today, as I was checking my mail, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was an actual letter in there among the junk mass-sendouts from the BCM, Jacob's Society, and every other campus orginization that I made the mistake of giving my box number to at the begining of the year. It was a tainted joy, however, when I realized that it was just a full length invitation from the BCM to join one of their leadership teams; I'm not even a member of the BCM, and I have no desire to be.

The thing that got me was the letter's opening, "Someone recommended you to take part in the BCM leadership team, which is an opportunity to lead and blah blah blah..." First, someone recommended me as a leader? Take a look at me: I'm neither charasmatic nor patient, and most days my appearance is more disheveled than most other students; I look as if I've slept in my clothes, because I usually have. I've been known to have an edge to my voice instead of giving a soft answer, and I do have a tendency to, in the words of one of my co-workers, "...be very offensive to people who don't know you." If something gets too hard, I don't take a break from it, I tend to give up. I don't delegate instructions well. I'm the least suited person for a leadership position that I know.

But this isn't really about me. It's about what I see as an almost disturbing trend to tell every man, woman, child, animal, or otherwise sentient life-form that it, too, can be a leader. From the classrooms of America's high schools to the church basements where teenagers hang out at "youth group," there is a philosophy out there resounding and rebounding and gathering enough momentum to knock over all walls-- the one that says that everyone is a leader.

Fact is, not everyone was meant to be a leader; some people are good followers, and some-- me, for example-- are good followers who know when to question the leadership. If everyone is out there asserting their leadership skills that they learned from a three day seminar, there's going to be nothing but discord and nothing is going to get accomplished. You're going to have a bunch of trained ego-maniacal apes jumping up and down, trying to assume control of the clan while the folks like me sit back and wish that Leadership Class had never been offered.

Ok, my point is...Well, I don't really have a point. I'll just restate what I've already said: not everyone was meant to be a leader, and I most certainly don't have the desire to delegate (I prefer to be the brains behind the leader, the man behind the man, so to speak...I like to control the puppet king). Some people-- and in my opinion, most of these so-called leaders-- were just meant to follow.

Trust me on this: if a group needs a new leader, one will rise to the surface; we don't need to groom every child in America for that moment. If it comes down to it, yeah, I will lead, but that doesn't mean that I'm a natural-born leader or wish that I were; it just means that necessity dictates it.


There's No Place Like Home.