Derek Sivers does a nice job extracting leadership lessons from the Dancing Guy at Sasquatch. That's right, this guy:
Sivers writes:
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!
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's not about the leader anymore - it's about them, plural. Notice he'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.
And what proves Sivers' point about the importance of standing alone even further is that Dancing Guy was dancing for quite a long time before he finally sparked a movement: Other videos show him dancing for at least 20 minutes before the video above was shot.
It's noteworthy that the guy Sivers dubs the "First Follower" technically wasn't first. Those other videos show a dozen people interacting with Dancing Guy before First Follower comes on the scene. Most of those others seem self-conscious, including one man who's egged on by his friends shooting the video to actually mock Dancing Guy--not that Dancing Guy cared.
What distinguished First Follower wasn't that he was first in line, but that he shared Dancing Guy's passion, his unself-conscious playfulness. He wasn't first, but he was the first to stick around, and that's what made the difference. As Sivers concludes:
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.
Be public. Be easy to follow!
But the biggest lesson here - did you catch it?
Leadership is over-glorified.
Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he'll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:
It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no movement without the first follower.
We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.
The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.
Sivers echoed aspects of this theme in a talk he gave at SXSW: "The biggest secret of promotion is that it's all about them--it's not about you."
