Leader Nature

Before a person can take any action to lead their followers, they must be able

to recognize approximately where their followers are in the developmental cycle.

To do this, he or she must watch closely the actions of his or her followers and

determine to what degree their actions are being influenced dominantly by either

confidence or competence. Once the leader knows the point of confidence vs.

competence in his or her followers, he or she will know which factor to build

on. When the leader feels they have successfully motivated their followers to be

both very confident and competent, and that the followers are ready and have the

responsibility to lead themselves to their goal, then they know that at that

point, the followers are ready to accept some leadership themselves. Once the

followers are ready for some leadership of their own, the next problem at hand

becomes how to go about empowering them with the leadership responsibilities.

Needless to say, the leader cannot simply step away and allow the responsibility

to dump onto the followers; surely if that happened, they would quickly lose

confidence and possibly competence too. Instead, the leadership and

responsibility of the followers should be increased gradually as they are

steadily empowered, and at a rate that depends on how well the newly gained

leadership is handled. At all times though, the leader must be prepared to guide

or even realign the direction the newly independent followers take. The leader

must also realize the risk of failure in the complete empowerment of his or her

followers, as starting over completely is hardly possible. Were that to occur,

the subject would near definitely experience a severe loss of confidence as a

major consequence to a premature empowerment situation. And lastly, if a leader

is completely successful in empowering his or her subjects and has sent them

well off on their way to their ultimate goal, the leader must realize that

he/she has completed his or her own.