Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Discussion: Followship

Today's installment of "How to Herd Cats: Essays on Pagan Leadership" covers the opposite side of the coin: "Followship." Almost all the literature about power dynamics is focused on leadership. People often forget that good leaders need good followers. So let's explore that...

Do you think of yourself as a leader, a follower, or some of both? Why?

What do you consider the personal qualities of a good follower?

What are some of the skills of a good follower?

Can followship be taught or learned, or is it innate?

Do followers deserve respect? Why or why not?

How does the wider Pagan community view followers?

What does it mean for a follower to bestow their service on a leader?
Tags: daily spell, paganism
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  • 23 comments
...go 1 level up... Expand
dulcinbradbury

dulcinbradbury

May 5 2008, 18:08:24 UTC 13 years ago

I tend to see leadership as having an implicit contract. The difficult part is that people can find themselves leading without having consciously volunteered for it.

So... if a follower "bestows" their service on a leader, to me there's an inherent contract of trust. The leader has the additional hands to accomplish a goal while the follower trusts the leader to be honest in his/her goals, aims and intentions. This is part of the reason that violations of that kind of trust are (and should be) taken so seriously.
ysabetwordsmith

ysabetwordsmith

May 6 2008, 05:35:33 UTC 13 years ago

Your point about trust is very well made! I suspect that's one reason we have such challenges with power dynamics in Pagan culture: many of us have had that trust violated before.

*ponder* There are things that can be done to help people recover from sexual violation. I wonder if anything similar would work with, hm, sociodynamic violation.

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