Being a leader can be dangerous, but nowhere near as dangerous as waiting for others, or even worse just following them. The average person is overweight, likely to be divorced and has less than £2,000 in the bank. If you follow and do what most people do, then don’t be surprised if you get what most people get. Despite the fact that over 490,000 new businesses were registered in just a six month period in the UK an Intuit survey revealed that well over half of all businesses are struggling to grow, and nearly half are struggling with cash flow. Many of those businesses will just be trying to follow the others into an exiting space and do what is already being done. they will be neither remarkable or leaders. Effective people don’t follow others because they don’t want what the majority get.
There are many blogs on this site talking about leadership, and indeed a recent blog How To Effectively Lead Yourself looked at the importance of leading yourself before leading others. Leading yourself means you are not following others, and if you know what you want then effectively leading yourself is the way to begin to achieve your objective. How many times, especially recently have you heard people blame others for why they are not moving forward? Following others and waiting for the government to help or “do something to help” or for “normality” to return will not make things better. Stop following others and waiting for something to be done and lead yourself toward your objective. The only problem with this alternative to following others is that your failures will all be down to you, you can’t blame anyone else, but that’s a good thing. If you are one of those who says “it’s their fault, I did exactly what they said and it all went wrong” then when things go well you must praise others, not yourself. Following others, you see, is easy, that’s why so many do it, you can pass the buck. The alternative can not only bring you criticism but also allows others the say “I told you so”. Only those who can lead can take this and thrive on it.
Of course when it goes right you can genuinely say it was down to you. “If you want to feel better, blame others. If you want to get better, blame yourself.” Alex Hormozi.
The alternative to being a follower carries risks but, in todays change based environment, not as many risks as being the same as everyone else.
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