Leaders & Followers
Max De Pree, in Leadership is an Art, said we should think of leaders as bus drivers. If they don't take people where they want to go they're quite apt to get off the bus.
The Reinforcing Loop in Fig. 1 is intended to indicate that leaders add to followers and followers add to leaders.
This structure also represents the proverbial chicken and egg problem. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? And the answer is yes! Like the chicken and the egg leaders and followers form an interacting structure which isn't separable. You simply can't have one without the other.
Yet, if this was all there was to it then we'd have many more leaders than are apparent in the world today.
If this structure were not the case then we wouldn't have leaders and followers would we? It would be more like tyrants and the oppressed.
- DePree, Max (1989) Leadership is an Art. Dell
Systems Thinking World Discussions
Systems Thinking World Q&A * Gene Bellinger