Here are a few more thoughts on the ways of people …

Basically there are two types of people: leaders and followers.

In this world most people are followers. And that’s fine because there are only so many “L for Leader” t-shirts to go round.

But what is it that differentiates leaders and followers? There is some fundamental difference between them; a difference in the way they think or how they look at the world. What is it?

Reading a recent article by Emily over at The Dirty Normal, she proposes, and I think she is right, that the difference is vision.

Look at the people around you. Lots of those people are angry, annoyed, upset, pissed off with something; generally moaning, or worse. They are in this state pretty much permanently. And they never move beyond it. They meander around grumbling but never really doing a lot about it.

But leaders are different. So now look at the real leaders you know, or have come across. Whether you like(d) them or not, or agree(d) with them or not, think about people like Winston Churchill, Richard Branson, Freddie Laker, the Dalai Lama, Field-Marshal Montgomery. They have/had a vision of how things should be. They can move through their anger to think through what the vision means and are then pulled towards it, taking people with them.

Sure they may sometimes get annoyed by something, but they move through and beyond it. They can do this because they have that vision of how things should be different and they’re going to try to get there. They don’t get stuck in the anger.

As Emily says being angry means you’re paying attention. That’s good and necessary. But too many people let it burn them out and are never able to move on.

[C]onsider letting your fires burn quietly […] and rather than pushing against the pressures that want to constrain you … figure out what you want to move toward, and pull the world toward that vision. Imagine the world you want, and move toward it […] leaders are motivated by a vision, not by rage.

That vision is something beyond a self-interest and personal gain. It is a bigger and more holistic thing. Something which affects a wider audience.

Leaders don’t always succeed in achieving their vision. And different leaders have different ways of getting there — some quietly, others much more blatantly. But without that vision they aren’t leaders and they never start on the journey. Without visions there are no leaders.

And there probably aren’t any working thinkers either. Leaders and working thinkers are not identical, but it seems to me they do tend to feed off each other.