While you can’t be a leader if you don’t have followers, logically the reverse should be true, as well. Thus with all the talk of “leadership” currently going on in our community, I thought I’d pull a quick bait-n-switch, here, and write instead on what makes good followers. Below is my list of Top Five characteristics I think followers need to have (or at the very least quickly develop) in order to attract top-quality leaders.
1. Followers are not thugs.
If you can’t manage someone without a baseball bat, you’re not a leader—you’re a thug. But if you can’t follow someone without a baseball bat, you’re not a follower. You’re a stalker. And once you succeed in using it (presumably to replace the leader), you’ll simply have graduated to being a murderer.
2. Followers are not disciples.
I once heard a story about a leader who walked into a crowd. A woman approached him and said, “Can I touch you?” Smiling, he replied, “You can hug me!” If I were that leader I would’ve said “Sure!” and then led her by the wrist to the nearest psychiatric hospital. That’s where people should go once they’ve convinced themselves that I’m Jesus Christ.
3. Followers can turn left.
If the scout sent on ahead comes back and says, “We can’t go that way, there’s a huge forest fire that stretches on for miles,” followers believe him. And if the scout sent to the right comes back and says, “We can’t go that way, there are packs of ravenous wolves all about,” followers believe him, too. Thus when the scout that went left comes back and says, “Its all clear over there,” followers will turn left. They don’t need a leader who dramatically intones, “I will lead you through the fire,” or one who thunders, “I will lead you through the wolves!” Followers recognize the difference between boldness and suicidal grandiosity. When a leader steers them toward the latter, they ship him off to the same psychiatric hospital filled with people who believe he’s Jesus Christ.
4. Followers do not expect leaders to walk backward.
Followers realize that Life is not a tour of the Pentagon. Tour guides at the Pentagon are required to walk backward through the whole thing. It’s the only way they can keep an eye on tourists who might otherwise scurry off down the wrong corridor. The only reason a Pentagon tour guide can do this is because he or she already knows the route, and has practiced walking it backward. In uncharted territory, a leader needs to be able to turn around so that he can see where he’s going. Otherwise he’ll sooner or later walk his followers off a cliff.
5. Followers move on before they’re chewed on.
If a group stays in one area for too long, what eventually happens is it consumes the resources of that area. The bigger the group is, the faster the process goes. This is why we need to move on. You can’t have campfires if your people have already burned down all of the trees. You can’t have drinking water if those a mile upstream are using the river as a toilet. Trust me on this—in both the cultural and spiritual sense, finding a place with food beats out starvation every time. So if your leader says “Let’s move on,” take a look around at the landscape. If there’s nothing left to eat except each other, he’s right.
© Copyrighted material. This article cannot be copied, reproduced or redistributed without the express written consent of the author. As with every blog on this website, this blog does not reflect the opinion of DeafDC.com.
35 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
6. Followers ask questions and hold leaders responsible for their actions.
A leader who does not allow his/her constituents to question him or accept that s/he is responsible for the welfare of his/her followers is not a leader, but a dictator. Leaders are human beings who are fallible. They are not gods or goddesses, but should earn respect through discussion and debate, not through intimidation.
I love that one! :)
Ditto!
Amen!
Er, thanks! *blushing*
Regarding your next Dr. Spencer Johnson’s (author of “Who Moved My Cheese?”) observations: couldn’t that apply to the current candidates being vetted for the Gallaudet Provost position? As of now, I am still incredibly cynical of Gallaudet’s current steps and I suspect many of us are.
The reason why I say that is because I read Josh Allmann’s posts on the three finalists and then saw his observation that “even though the Provost job was advertised in at least ten professional publications, the finalists are all Gallaudet employees. All three have been at Gallaudet for a very long time, which does have a tendency to promote group-think — an echo chamber effect. Why no new faces to inject fresh ideas into a somewhat moribund administrative bureaucracy?”
I think that logic is worth exploring in light of your new Chicken McNuggets about what it means to be a good leader and a good follower.
I realize that there’s this huge sense of bastion pride about the university being lead by deaf people from the top to the bottom level and I also share in that sense of pride. But, wouldn’t it be better to bring in new blood where those people have little connection to what it means to deaf so that they can coldly and logically analyze on what the university needs to do to improve its image, rankings, reputation and academic achievement? Wouldn’t that be better instead of discussing exchanging best practices among grade school educators and what can be done to preemptively improve the English fluency of incoming freshman (Dr. Marshall), offering oneself as the student’s advocate when dealing with the President in terms of healing (Dr. Innes), or focusing on improving first year experience (Dr. Weiner)?
Given that Josh and Allison Kaftman described the Provost as leading and directing the academic achievement of the university, shouldn’t the University be looking outwards by bringing in a serious heavyweight and give that person something akin to carte blanche to triage what’s essential from an academic standpoint and restore the University’s luster? Wouldn’t that be a better approach as compared to looking inwards for someone who probably won’t rock the boat too much?
Otherwise, I have some difficulty seeing how the vision that Gallaudet is hoping to “sell” to not just the students, faculty but also to the federal government is going to be effective. So if we apply the profundity of your insights here, then shouldn’t we apply them and then just move on by tuning left?
Scott, there are four problems, in my opinion, that feed into the situation we’re in now. One, Hearing America continues to view deafness as a medical condtion, and simultaneously tries to cure it while rejecting it. Two, reacting to that, hearing parents first seek to cure deafness and too late seek to expose their deaf child to a fully accessible language in a timely manner. Three, reacting to both those things, Deaf people pull away from and discriminate against anyone who wants to be “hearing.” And four, reacting to THAT, “deaf” people pull away in hatred and disgust for “Deaf” people, whom they view as being unrealistic and militant. There are exceptions to these generalizations, but more or less I think that’s what’s going on here.
Thus bringing in “outside heavyweights,” if by that you mean hearing people, to coldly and logically analyze what’s going on isn’t going to work. You can’t just clap your hands and start making Hearing America view deafness differently. Hell, we’ve been working on that for twenty years now, and progress is a bit slow, wouldn’t you say? And you can’t just clap your hands and presto hearing parents see language exposure (any language, including ASL) as something more important than getting an implant that may or may not help the kid out.
If fixing Gallaudet will take care of any of that, then logically it should start happening once the MSA gets through with us. THey are outsiders, aren’t they? And they’re certainly heavyweights. But it won’t work, because cleaning up our own dysfunctionality only goes so far. If everything AROUND us, and feeding us (translation: the educational realities that produce our students) is dysfunctional as well, the problem is still there. So if we’re going to follow ANYBODY, at the very least we should do it with that knowledge. That’s the only thing that’ll stop us from putting a burden on our “leaders” that we aren’t willing to shoulder ourselves.
also bringing in a complete outsider who knows next to nothing about how deaf people learn isn’t going to be helpful.
But……..Deafness IS a medical condition!
Being deaf isn’t like being born of a certain race. If any of you think otherwise, yer delusional. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll move on and challenge your other fantasies.
It is technically a medical condition, but it also is something that is what you make out of it. For many of us, it is a cultural and linguistic identity. Research by numerous linguists, anthropologists and scientists have documented that as well.
So, while I may not agree completely with with Chris on all of what he says, I don’t think he’s being delusional on this one.
Deafness can indeed be considered a medical condition, but “being a woman” and “being black” can be considered medical conditions also. The condition of being a woman can be treated (with sex change surgery). And the condition of being black can be treated with whatever treatment Michael Jackson had done. Having small breasts can be treated (with breast implants), having too much fat can be treated (with liposuction), having too much hair can be treated (with elecro-something). Not having enough hair can be treated, but they’re all too expensive to afford on my salary.
Punky, Gallaudet’s student body can be divided into roughly three categories. 1) those who are fluent in both ASL AND English, 2) those who are fluent in one but not the other, and 3) those who are fluent in neither. You can further divide that last group into two more categories, 3a) international students who are fluent in their OWN signed, spoken, or written languages but not in ASL or English (in other words they HAVE a native language) and 3b) …exactly what “3″ implies–those students who have no language.
Curing deafness and curing illiteracy are two different ballgames entirely. Literacy depends upon timely language exposure. “Hearing” ability is only assumed to have something to do with it becaue English is an aural language. But think on it… if literacy were dependent ONLY upon hearing, there would be no English- (or ASL- for that matter) literate pre-lingually deafened adults.
My problem isn’t primarily with Hearing America seeing deafness as a medical condition (though that bugs me too). It’s in the fact that it provides biased information. It tells hearing parents not to expose their deaf child to signing (presumably under the pretense that signing will distract the child from using his residual hearing). But not exposing a deaf child to signing–and grammatically ACCURATE signing at that–is probably what creates illiterate deaf adults.
If you don’t want to be deaf, fine. More power to you. But even if cochlear implants succeed in giving people back their hearing, if enough time has gone by, they’ll never succeed in giving people back their literacy-learning capability. Those are two entirely separate sets of wiring, connected to two separate sets of moving parts. If you want to make a dent in illiteracy, you have to get the parents to understand this.
Chris, I don’t have any particular issue with your perspective. I’ve always thought that strong parental involvement is crucial for the child, no matter what method is chosen, ultimately. One thing I’ve noticed that a lot of upstanding Deaf folks, including contributors here, have had strong parental involvement.
The question becomes, how do you encourage that?
This also brings up a tangential, if touchy, subject, about residential schools. On the one hand, you could say that residential schools encourage children to use ASL at an early age, but, at the same time, run the risk of perpetuating certain languages and behaviors that are not optimal for “the outside world” such as lower literacy rates. Also, for many parents, it’s an easy way to shrug off responsibility (although this is a big caveat, not all parents are the same and not all act the same way — I’ve seen both sets of parents — involved and indifferent — at residential schools although the more actively involved tend to be Deaf).
There is no easy answer (if there is indeed one) to this problem of early language intervention and parental involvement.
But I do know that one size doesn’t fit all.
Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked from your essay on the recipe for leadership.
well in using the mentality of CH… I’m white and if you think I’m racist.. it’s not my fault it’s a medical condition. (sob) you can’t blame me!!!!!
(ahem)
Punky,
People discriminate against people with medical conditions ALL the time. I’m speaking of people with ACTUAL, physically verifable medical conditions. People in wheelchairs, people with physical deformities.
So, your analogy is just lame. Sorry.
PUnky
I forgot to add this part -
To discriminate against people with physical disabilities is considered to be (what’s the word?) disabilism (?). It’s wrong.
So, if you discriminate against a person because of their color, it’s wrong.
That’s why your analogy didn’t work, because it’s wrong either way anyway.
Monkey– you say residental schools “run the risk of perpetuating certain languages and behaviors that are not optimal for “the outside world” such as lower literacy rates.” Actually, the literacy rates for both residental schools and mainstreamed programs are pretty similar. I have yet to see a statistic that shows one is higher than another. HOWEVER, statistics from bilingual/bicultural residental schools look promising– especially the ones out of Indiana where graduates on average read at the 8th grade level.
I’m curious if you have any data to back up what you said.
PB,
Actually that’s a point. What’s hatred? If it’s not a medical condition why give violent criminals medications to calm them down? Or aggressive patients or even children? Why did Michael Jackson allow the things that he had done to himself… chipping away at his nose until it was ready to collapse, thinning his lips, lightening his skin? For him hatred–albeit self-hatred, self-loathing–ultimately became a medical condition. And so did the erradication of his self-hatred, because he tried to get rid of it by altering himself.
But did he? If the problem of hatred is mental and not biological then giving a deaf child an implant a) won’t stop others–either hearing or Deaf people–from hating him, and b) won’t stop him from hating himself (if that’s what he’s taught how to do). And it also won’t stop him from developing hatred *toward* others (again, either hearing or Deaf).
It’s not enough to just encourage parental involvement. Making headway through hatred is the job of both leaders and followers. This isn’t a place where you can “turn left.” This is all around us. And neither a Miracle Ear (or a cochlear implant equivalent) nor a Mecca of the Deaf is a pretty enough illusion to hide it anymore.
Hey, you know what’s interesting. I can understand racism (overly played card BY anyone IMO) People just have a different color, doesn’t mean they can’t do anything else, the color of a man (or womans) skin does not stop them from functioning, nor does it force another to take extra steps to modify the everyday on-going curriculum. Being deaf does modify thus, deafness is a loss of a sense, to soften the difficulties it can be helped by use of sign language (interpreters), technology (Cochlear implants, hearing aids, visual aids, tty’s etc etc) so on and so forth. Loss of a sense is a medical disability and it is understandable for the majority to be frustrated about something they do not understand. Racism, “hatred” stemming from the color of a person’s skin does NOT make sense, it’s understandable to be objective about it, but expecting the majority to do EVERYTHING to overcome a medical malady is unreasonable. “hey bob, i’m deaf… since I can’t hear you must accommodate my every needs, i shouldn’t do a thing but stand here and criticize your impudence.”
Case in point: http://www.raa-deaf.org/sandbox1.html
Gotta live with the medical condition…. and work with the majority, because if you continue to see the world as a customer service desk, you will be looked down upon. Those who strive to achieve, whine less, work hard, go through life with some modicum of sanity and reason will be respected and treated with some familiarity.
It’s irrational and illogical to expect utopia or some kind of extreme socialism. John Lennon is dead… it’s time to “break on through, break on through break on through… the other side”
**** this is for Chris Heuer ****
Please save us from another long winded rebuttal about some guy who studied monkey’s in the Congo and found some anthropological possibility that socialism and utopia is possible.
PLEASE!!!! I beg of you!
Tara, first of all, my name’s Suitably Ironic Moniker, or SIM for short. I do not have, as far as I know, any connections with monkeys other than looking like a hirsute Neanderthal after a drunken bender in the morning and having a mega-great-grandfather who was descended from a monkey in the, ah, Pliocene Epoch.
Second, to answer your question, there have been many studies about literacy rates and residential schools. These are easily found online. One thing you will rapidly notice is that they all have their own ideological biases. Every year, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed M.Ed in Deaf Ed feels the need to publish a paper on literacy rates in the Deaf community, with a focus on residential schools.
But one thing they all agree upon is that deaf and hard of hearing children, on average, plateau at the third or fourth grade reading level. Studies have shown that the average American adult reads and writes at an eighth-grade level, and the average deaf adult at a fourth-grade level. I also believe that there was a study in the late 1990s by the Gallaudet Research Institute that showed that the average 17 to 18 year old deaf student who took the SAT showed that only 50 percent read at a grade level at or above the fourth, while the other 50 percent read below fourth grade reading level.
This, by any standards, is suboptimal.
You are correct, however, that the trend is that the dismal rates for literacy appear the same all across the board for both residential schools and mainstreamed programs. So, I was wrong in focusing solely on residential schools. There are some serious problems, though, with residential schools.
Despite the fact that there have been studies that show that bilingual and bicultural approaches show promise in raising literacy rates, deaf residential schools have had a pronounced tendency to ignore that approach and focus more on the socialization aspect. Residential schools are also somewhat insular.
We have known about bi-bi since the mid 1990s and I have yet to see any residential institution put that in place for several years (although I could be wrong) and any measurable and significant progress in literacy rates under that approach. There always appears to be some excuse, finances and/or and outside students placed in from failing mainstreamed programs skewing any study.
Setting aside ASL as a fundamental requirement for any Deaf person, it is also necessary in today’s world to be proficient in English, period. Not to have that skill is to set yourself back in terms of your career, jobs, finances, retirement planning, and, of course, the ability to be taken seriously by the outside world. Not to be literate is “less than optimal” in today’s world.
The problem with that SIM, is many programs dump their deaf students failures at the residential schools. It happens here in MI. For years, they claim they’re doing their jobs, but when they reach approximately the age of 12, they claim that the kid’s retarded and ship them off to MSD.
So I am sure that happens all over the country, which would skew the testing results of the residential schools. Now if you broke it down into the students’ ages of when they entered the residential schools, then I would support your argument. Because I think the picture would be clearer if the researchers did that.
“Racism, “hatred” stemming from the color of a person’s skin does NOT make sense…”
When does it EVER make sense?
Umm… Kaftan. Ain’t no “man” where I’m concerned.
Seriously, though, Scott… I like and agree with a lot of your thinking, but I’m also in agreement with most the others who’ve responded to you: the struggle is figuring just HOW to get out of the current quagmire that is perception of Deaf people and Gallaudet and Deaf leadership — both inside and outside — and build a new framework for thinking about all of these things.
Until then, it almost feels as if we have no choice to muddle along with whatever is available. Still, I remain simultaneously cautiously cynical and optimistic.
Alison -
Cynical and optimistic don’t go well together. Pairing the two may work well as a defense mechanism, but, in the long run, it can also hold you back from moving forward.
I shouldn’t be hard on you since I’m guilty of that as well.
I think the first thing we need to do is find a way to reach parents with deaf children. Their first exposure to deafness is the “box ear” viewpoint, which limits them from learning about other options. That is, unless, they are the terrific, inquistive type of parents who don’t just accept the first answer, like my utterly fabulous folks, for instance. :)
Imagine if they had heeded the advice of the doctor who said I was mentally retarded and needed to be placed in an institution.. *shudder*
Scott, interesting point. Perhaps the administration does not want a provost who would rock the boat just yet because the administration -read: Dr. Davilia - wants to have more of a hand in the provost’s duties.
We can’t really say when we do not know who the Gallaudet “outsiders” were that applied for the position. What if the selection of outsiders was either so paltry and/or so pathetic?
Belle - your point is true.
My biggest concern was that Dr. Davilia’s term is temporary because he’s only an acting interim president right? If that’s true, and assuming that the term of the Provost’s position isn’t dependent on Dr. Davilia, then one of his legacies will involve the selection of the Provost. So, that is why I hope he will take serious consideration when selecting the top quality candidate instead of just one who’s deaf and popular. That sort of formula isn’t how one should, I would suggest, start the “healing process”.
*Note: I edited two words being “because” and “legacies” because they were misspelled.*
The “acting interim president” is going to be installed as THE president next week.
Huh? Davila is already THE PRESIDENT, as of right now. He is the President in every sense, except one, that he has a term limitation of about two years, and he cannot reapply for a more permament position.
*scratching head*
Really? What about a board vote? A student body meeting? I was under the impression that interim meant just that — interim.
*confused* Can you elaborate for me, MJ? Thanks!
MJ:
Is there something you know that we do not know yet about Dr. Davila on his status that’ll happen next week?
This leads me to wonder that in spite of the limited term, do the Board of Trustees have the power to grant Dr. Davila an extension for however long he can to lead the university?
Dr. Davila is being sworn in as President of Gallaudet just before graduation which is next week. Everyone has been invited! I got an invite as a Gallaudet alumnae. He has long stopped using the word “interim”.
I’m a Gally alum and I didn’t get an invite.
I was puzzled at first, but this link explains.
http://www.gallaudet.edu/x3698.xml
“Why are we having an installation for an interim president?
This may seem unusual. Although the Board of Trustees and Dr. Davila have agreed upon a term limit for his presidency, during his tenure Dr. Davila serves with the full duties and responsibilities of president. He is officially considered Gallaudet’s ninth president, therefore, it is appropriate that he be inaugurated as such.”
Leadership is an art. One person may see Davila’s leadership a big pile of elephant manure while others see it as golden statue. Same thing with my leadership looking like sewer river to the Old Deaf Guards while it’s a golden brick road to the new deaf generation.