{"id":4913,"date":"2010-05-28T11:59:41","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T18:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/discoveryfuel.com\/?p=4913"},"modified":"2016-09-29T18:01:19","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T02:01:19","slug":"the-shirtless-dancing-guy-a-pratical-theory-on-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/2010\/05\/28\/the-shirtless-dancing-guy-a-pratical-theory-on-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"A Practical Theory On Leadership &#038; Collaboration &#8211; &#8216;The Shirtless Dancing Guy&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got this video off of Charles Lemos&#8217; site and was referred to it by Ben Roberts&#8217; Facebook conversation. Derek Sivers gave this presentation at the TED Conference this week and got a standing ovation. It&#8217;s pretty brilliant in its takeaway. The video below is a healthy perspective on the collective&#8217;s role in leadership, especially the &#8216;first follower&#8217;. <strong>Watch how this natural form of taking the lead seeds the beginning of collaboration.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-video\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy\" width=\"1165\" height=\"655\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fW8amMCVAJQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the transcript, with bold notes made by Charles. Thanks to Charles and Derik.\u00a0<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you&#8217;ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let&#8217;s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:<\/p>\n<p>A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he&#8217;s doing is so simple, it&#8217;s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!<\/p>\n<p>Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it&#8217;s not about the leader anymore &#8211; it&#8217;s about them, plural. Notice he&#8217;s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.<\/p>\n<p>The 2nd follower is a turning point: it&#8217;s proof the first has done well. Now it&#8217;s not a lone nut, and it&#8217;s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers &#8211; not the leader.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we&#8217;ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we&#8217;ve got a movement!<\/p>\n<p>As more people jump in, it&#8217;s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there&#8217;s no reason not to join now. They won&#8217;t be ridiculed, they won&#8217;t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you&#8217;ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they&#8217;d be ridiculed for not joining.<\/p>\n<p>And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let&#8217;s recap what we learned:<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Be public. Be easy to follow!<\/p>\n<p>But the biggest lesson here &#8211; did you catch it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Leadership is over-glorified.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he&#8217;ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:<\/p>\n<p><strong>It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>There is no movement without the first follower.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> We&#8217;re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Be a follower, join a movement. That&#8217;s how change happens.<\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-4913\" data-postid=\"4913\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-4913 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got this video off of Charles Lemos&#8217; site and was referred to it by Ben Roberts&#8217; Facebook conversation. Derek Sivers gave this presentation at the TED Conference this week and got a standing ovation. It&#8217;s pretty brilliant in its takeaway. The video below is a healthy perspective on the collective&#8217;s role in leadership, especially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,9],"tags":[208,379,620,902,906,1078],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7WmHn-1hf","builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4913"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4913"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10057,"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4913\/revisions\/10057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/discoverycolabs.com\/vicsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}