Leaders and Followers

I was reading a column by New York Times Columnist David Brooks, which was posted June 13, 2012 in the SJ Mercury.  The column was titled, To have good leaders, we must have better followers.  Brooks opened by addressing some of the more recent monuments built around our nation's capital.  He discusses, in his opinion, the strengths and weaknesses of some of these monuments and how they don't seem to measure up to the strength, power, humanity and the "authority" or "leadership" that the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials project.  He references the memorials for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and the proposed design for the Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial and finds them lacking in comparison.  They fail to demonstrate the leadership and authority of the men they memorialize.

He writes of power and how it should be used to bind and build.  He writes of the paradox of power and how the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials are a testament to how these great leaders navigated the paradox. 

In contrast, he also writes of the paradox of followership; as Americans we believe that all men are created equal, but that we choose our leaders.   In choosing them we also have to defer to them and to trust their discretion. Or as Brooks states: "we're proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by 'just' authority."

But it is the closing two paragraphs that caught my attention and to which I direct yours. 

Brooks writes: "In his memoir, "At Ease," Eisenhower delivered the following advice: "Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you."  Ike slowly mastered the art of leadership by becoming a superb apprentice.

To have good leaders you have to have good followers - able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it."

Aren't these skills some of the things we should be looking for in our present leaders, nationally, statewide and locally?  And shouldn't we be thinking about being better followers?