Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Many people want to be a leader, and because they want to be leader they don’t enjoy the follower position that they are currently in. However, if you are not a good follower, you will not be a good leader.

There is a direct relationship between good following and good leading.

If you are a good follower, what do you do?

– You do your assigned job seriously, always finishing the job on time, with the best quality.

– You communicate well with everyone in the team (usually in the same office) to understand what everyone else is doing and what difficulties they are facing.

– You support everyone who has some difficulty and need a helping hand.

If you do these things well, you are ready to be a leader, because (1) you know your job, (2) you know everyone else’s job in the team, (3) you are ready to support everyone else. Those are the tasks of a leader – leader needs to know everyone’s job to assign jobs correctly and support each person in his/her job; leader need to communicate well with all team members; leader need to coordinate everyone’s work into the big work of the office.

When you are ready to be a leader, chances are your company will promote you to a leadership position in your office or a similar office.

That is why you need to be a good follower before you can be a good leader. In addition, you are now the leader of your office, but you also enter a new team as a follower – the team of all office leaders, chaired by the department head.

In other words, you are leader (of your office team) and follower (in your department’s office-leaders team) at the same time. Most of us are like that – we lead a group and someone else leads us. It means, we need to be a good follower and good leader at the same time.

So, you‘re free to dream about a leading job, but don’t forget that your foundation on which you advance is the follower’s job.

Wish everyone be good follower and good leader at the same time.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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