I recently asked someone I know if they wanted to be involved with some idea I had begun to work on. His initial response was to ask me who else was involved, namely some mutual acquaintances we had.

He's a follower. Not what I was looking for. I rescinded my offer.

A leader is a person who decides to do something new or agrees to join in something new, when no one else is on board (yet) or when no one else believes in the idea at all. A follower will join in something new too -- as long as he can see other people already doing it.

A follower can be 50/50 on a decision, and will be swayed in either direction by whether or not their friends are doing it. A leader gets excited when no one else sees what they see -- that's the opportunity.

A leader does things without being asked or told or given permission. A follower will do nothing unless he's told or asked or threatened (with some form of loss, penalty or exclusion, for example) into action. Sometimes, even those things won't move a follower into action.

This is not a good/bad discussion between leaders and followers -- there are benefits and drawbacks to both positions and good uses for each in certain situations. This is just a simple primer for you to be able to better discern who you're dealing with when you interact with people.

If you're leading something, your efforts will expand by adding followers. There are lots of them to choose from, and they will, one by one, begin to add up. Each follower brings another follower, that follower brings another, so-forth and so-on. This is not a bad thing.

If you want your efforts to multiply, though, you need to seek, find and recruit leaders. A leader brings 10 followers and seeks out another leader who brings another 17 followers and another leader who brings another 105 followers and another leader, and so on. Leaders aren't as easy to find, and even harder to recruit -- they're often busy leading things and don't have much free time or energy to hear about what you have going on. But when you recruit just one of them to your cause, it will be well worth the effort.


Get enough of them, and their combined efforts start doing your work for you.