-- Napoleon I
Reading: by David Baron from Moses on Management – 50 Leadership Lessons from the Greatest Manager of All Time (p. xii)
From our knowledge of him through the Bible and popular culture, Moses seems to be a bundle of contradictions. Is he the resistant, moody shepherd of Exodus or the godlike liberator portrayed by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments? One moment he’s begging the Lord to choose someone else for the job, the next he’s striding through the Red Sea like Zeus. The Bible paints a portrait of a flawed and often frustrated leader whose compassion for his people is frequently at odds with his commitment to the Lord. By any account, Moses was a highly complex individual who operated in a wildly uncertain world. For that very reason, his story provides us with insights and leadership tools that are invaluable today.
Reading: by Barbara Kellerman from Followership – How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (p. xvii)
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the idea of leadership gained fresh currency. First in the military, next in corporate America, and finally in the public and non-profit sectors, we became persuaded that good leadership can be taught – that is people can be taught to be good leaders. Just a few years ago, in fact, the investment in leadership education and development was said to approximate some $50 billion…
At the same time, the concept of followership languished… Leaders are presumed to be so much more important than followers that our shared interest is in leadership, not in followership. In fact, the word itself, followership, remains suspect. Look up the word in your dictionary, and it’s as likely as not to be missing. Type the word in your computer, and it’s as likely as not to be rejected, either as misspelled or as not even in the English language… The bottom line: for all the lip service paid to the importance of the relationship between leaders and followers, the message we receive is that the former belong front and center and the latter off to the side.
Reading: by Carl Dennis a poem entitled “My Moses”
Time to praise the other Moses, the one who concludes
That the bush isn't really burning, as he first supposed,
Just backlit in red by the setting sun,
Magnified by the need of a runaway to be pardoned,
To pull his shoes off and receive a vision.
The Moses who, when he lifts his staff,
Can't part the waters, who has to wade in
At low tide and hope for the best.
Nobody drowns. Nobody's following. The twelve tribes,
Sluggish after a hard day in the quarries,
Didn't find his lecture on the virtues inspiring.
And Pharaoh was willing to see him go.
Good riddance, what with his praise of creation
That gouged the work month with holidays.
Now he's wringing his clothes out on the other side,
Relieved it hasn't taken him any longer to realize
He isn't much of a prophet, that he hasn't the gift.
Free now of the journey to the Promised Land
And the wars with the natives, he can settle down at once
Whenever he pleases, and be happy even here
In the country that disappointed Columbus,
That wasn't the hoped-for shortcut to spices.
Happy even on this block of mine, my neighbor,
A civics teacher at the high school,
Who leaves the gate to his yard unlocked
So the neighborhood children can pick the berries
Before the frost comes and leaf smoke rises
From small, mute fires he's lit himself.
Of Leaders and Followers
A Sermon Delivered on September 23, 2012
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Today, after the worship service, you are invited to join us for fellowship, to mingle with others over a cup of coffee or tea. In addition to our usual social hour, today, several active groups within the congregation have set up displays that provide information on what it is they do. And several of us, who have taken on various leadership roles, will be there, hoping to meet you and to hear what it is that interests you about this church.
Being a leader in a Unitarian Universalist church is a rewarding and humbling undertaking. It isn’t always easy.
Our religious tradition is marked by a profound individualism. We like to think ourselves as religious non-conformists. Each of us thinks about God and salvation in different ways. We treasure a critical approach to faith and don’t simply submit to what others say – whether priests or prophets or politicians. “Question authority” is one of our most deeply held religious habits.
So while in some religious traditions, a leader is envisioned as a trusted shepherd, who guides a flock of gentle sheep, in UU congregations leadership has been compared with the task of herding cats. Leadership is tricky in our church, it seems, not because we lack good leaders, but because the fewest of us are good followers.
I remember one of my earliest lessons in religious leadership. I was a twenty-four year old ministerial intern in a small UU congregation in Hayward, CA. It was a Wednesday evening, and I was in the process of leading a small group discussion. And to mark the beginning of our meeting, to help us get centered, I thought I would light a chalice. There were perhaps ten of us. Our chairs were set in a circle. I got up, leaned forward, struck a match, lit the candle, and then sat back down. But before I realized what was going on, a member of the group – an older gentleman, let me call him Hank – bent forward and in one swift movement blew the candle out. (Later I learned Hank considered himself an adamant humanist, and had a strong dislike for anything that struck him as “ritual.”)
* * *
Unitarian Universalists are unique. But perhaps we are not as unique as we like to think. Barbara Kellerman says, a certain anti-authoritarian mindset is typical of the American way of life. It is rooted in our history. Initially a more traditional and deferential attitude toward authority existed among European Americans. In the early 1700s the divisions between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless were accepted, because this is the way things always had been. But then, the Revolutionary War changed all this. Suddenly colonial life was defined by defiance of traditional authorities. Resistance was practiced, rather than obedience. Rather than being a good follower, it was the act of refusing to follow that was considered necessary and appropriate.
Religious dissent joined political dissent, and it became not only common, but even commendable to challenge people in high places. “It was this antigovernment, antiauthority attitude that over the years came to be considered quintessentially American,” Kellerman writes. “The ideas that constitute the American Creed – equality, liberty, individualism, constitutionalism, and democracy – clearly demonstrate that opposition to power, and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power, are the essential themes of American political thought.”
The American Revolution, and the ideas that inspired it, created a culture in which civil disobedience is more admired than civil obedience.
In the early 1800s Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans did not “recognize any signs of incontestable greatness or superiority in any of their fellows.” Rather, they relied on “their own judgment as the most apparent and accessible test of truth.” While the independence to which Tocqueville alludes is often considered admirable, it does not make it easy to govern, to lead.
* * *
One way to cope with a situation in which leadership is difficult, is to work harder at being a good leader. Thus we have an ever-growing industry of leadership development that is churning out book after book. Some of them offer the newest theories and techniques. Others lift up ancient and time-tested approaches to leadership.
Moses could be considered a quintessential religious leader. His role in leading the people of Israel out of bondage, through the wilderness, and into the Promised Land, has served to inspire social and political movements for millennia. And, as David Baron points out, Moses can serve as a model for business management, too. Baron breaks down his 50 lessons into three sections: delivering the message, leading in the wilderness, living by the code. His tips include: allow others to recognize your strengths and recognize the strengths of others, use a mission statement as your Ten Commandments, see crisis as an opening door, establish creative downtime, don’t compromise with tyranny, treat people fairly.
There is a lot to be said for the tips and techniques that can be found in many self-help manuals and leadership resources. Whenever I peruse them, in invariably find myself agreeing with much of the good advice offered. But, nevertheless, putting all these good suggestions into practice never seems to be quite as simple as the training manuals suggest. There seems to be something missing.
* * *
Barbara Kellerman makes the case that part of our problem is that we focus too much on leadership and not enough on followership. All coordinated communal activity involves both leaders and followers. The fact that we focus all our efforts on teaching leadership skills, but not followership skills, this is a tragic mistake. Leaders cannot lead without engaged followers.
What do followers look like? Kellerman defines followers as subordinates who have less power, authority and influence than their superiors and who, therefore usually, but not invariably, fall into line.
By distinguishing clearly between leaders and followers, she is not saying that leaders and followers are two distinct groups of people. In fact, the line that separates them is blurred. Sometimes designated leaders follow. Sometimes apparent followers lead. And in many work situations, we may – at the same time - serve both a leader for some of our colleagues, and as followers to others, standing as we do, somewhere on an organizational ladder where we have people below us, and people above us.
We all begin as followers, in infancy and childhood, as we follow the guidance of our elders on whom we depend. Then, as we grow older, we first follow leaders before we lead followers. It was with this dynamic in mind that Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that, in order to learn how to lead, we need to learn how to follow.
There are good followers and bad followers. Being a good follower is not simply a matter of obediently following directions and doing as one is told. A cautionary example often cited to describe both bad leadership and bad followership, is that of Germany under Hitler. But a similar dynamic can be found in all troubling stories of genocide and persecution around the world. The greatest atrocities in human history have been committed not merely by a few bad leaders, but by millions of bad followers.
Being a good follower, in these instances, and in all instances, involves challenging one’s leaders, if the leaders’ goals are immoral.
Good followers are involved and engaged in their organization or community. They do something, as opposed to doing nothing. Good followers also support good leaders, those who are effective and ethical. And they oppose bad leaders, those who are ineffective, or unethical, or both. And good followers, rather than seeking personal gain, strive to serve a greater good.
“Never for a moment overestimate follower power,” Kellerman says. “But never for a moment underestimate it either. There are times, even recent times, when the dam breaks, when follower power, people power, becomes so great, it can no longer be contained. The antiwar, civil rights, and women’s movements in the United States; the end of apartheid in Sough Africa; the fall of the Berlin wall and the liberation of Soviet bloc countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia in Eastern Europe; and of course, the wave of self-expression and self-actualization in China – all are of recent vintage.” These are examples of followership at its best.
These are some of Kellerman’s tips for those who aspire to good followership:
“Be aware of being a follower. Be informed. Be engaged. Be independent. Be a watchdog. Be prepared to analyze the situation, the leader, and the other followers. Be prepared to judge [them]… Be prepared to take a stand.... Know tactics and strategies such as cooperating, collaborating, co-opting, and overtly or covertly resisting. Know your options. Know the risk of doing something – and of doing nothing. [And above all] check your moral compass.”
* * *
Now that I have had a few decades to think about, I have to reconsider my understanding of what happened at that Wednesday evening discussion group in Hayward, CA. Maybe, in blowing out my candle, Hank was not being a bad follower. Maybe he was trying to be a good follower. Maybe he was a good follower, because he didn’t quietly go along with a leader with whom he disagreed. Instead he got actively involved. And in doing so, he helped the whole group think more carefully about the purpose of our gathering, and how we could work together more effectively and respectfully toward all.
* * *
Moses was a great prophet. But he was not the kind of Hollywood hero portrayed by Charlton Heston. He was a highly complex individual living in a wildly uncertain world. Just like each of us here today.
Being a prophet means he was not simply a leader. Before being a leader, he was a follower, who heard the voice of God, and tried to heeds its call.
Moses tried to be both a good leader and a good follower. Despite his own doubts and fears, he tried to follow the spirit of God, as he understood it. Despite his own short-comings and frustrations, he tried to lead his people.
Our liberal religious heritage teaches that each of us is a prophet, and all of us are priests. Most of us will never see a burning a bush. Most of us will settle for the sight of the red setting sun. Most of us will not part the waters with a magical staff, but will instead wade in at low tide and hope for the best.
The spirit I hear, is not calling us to some faraway promised land that we will find forty years from today. The spirit I hear, tells me we can find paradise right here, in this very neighborhood, in our own back yard.
As good leaders/followers, we see that the most promising path to salvation, the most reliable path to happiness, leads us more deeply into the here and now. Fully alive, fully engaged, in this place, at this time, with these people right here.
May we have the wisdom and courage
To follow in this spirit.
Amen.
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