C: You want to set the timer.
J: Oh yeah, there we go.
C: All right today’s topic is Who Would Follow You. I’m Courtney
J: And I’m Jackie.
C: Of all the things that you can do to judge your leadership effectiveness, one of the simplest ways that we’ve come up with is to ask yourself this simple question. Who would follow me even if they didn’t have to. Oh, that’s a weighty question.
J: It is.
C: Who would follow you? And answer it with actual people’s names, like not right now Jackie. I don’t want you to list a bunch of people’s names right now. It’s not what this is about. But who would follow me?
J: Well, I’m glad I don’t have to do that because the list would be very long, I am certain. That’s a great question though. And then we think you should follow it up with this question. What do those people have to gain by following me? Now you have to be careful not to ask yourself the question of why they would follow me. Like we’re really specific here. What do those people have to gain by following me? Because if you ask yourself just the question of, “why should people follow me?” What we tend to do is we answer that question with a list of all the things that we think are really great about ourselves. So, it’s really important though to think about this question from the perspective of your followers because all leadership is defined by what your followers see in you.
C: Let me just jump in, here’s the tricky part is you’ve got to be honest with yourself when you do this.
J: Oh right.
C: Don’t lie to yourself. Like, it’s not a valuable exercise unless you’re willing to do true self-reflection. If it’s a short list, it’s not easy to look at but that’s your truth. And that’s why I encourage you to do it as a self-reflection activity it’s between you and yourself and that’s it. The moment you start sharing it with others, your ego’s gonna jump in and it’s gonna wanna overstate your good intentions and lessen your less than good actions. And we all have them right, so don’t lie to yourself. Be honest go do the work.
J: All right, until next time