In a previous post I posed this question: “more people are followers than leaders, so isn’t it more important to cultivate effective followership than effective leadership?” In reality the distinction between leading and following isn’t very interesting. The goal of each member of a group should be to contribute to individual and shared goals in a balanced manner and promote the dignity of group members. In every group effort, whether business, charity, sports, or anything else, everyone leads and everyone follows.
I recently read Testimony, Solomon Volkov’s controversial publication of the memoirs of Dimitri Shostakovich, the great 20th century Russian composer. There were three different individuals in the book who demonstrated three different ways of “leading”, or behaving with character within a group. (See the note at the end of this post on the question of authenticity) Continue reading »
