This past week I had a unique conversation with a gentleman named Steven at a Fortune 500 company. He was being a condescending jerk as I asked him some questions about his company. He explained to me in detail how he was a "soldier" at his company. "I follow the orders of my boss and never question what he tells me to do," Steven said proudly. He continued to lecture me for the next twenty minutes about how if he makes a mistake, he corrects it and NEVER does it again.
Considering that I give talks across the country to college students about leadership and entrepreneurship, it struck me that I might be missing business opportunity. Steven's overwhelming bravado was an epiphany. Maybe I should conduct a workshop and title it, "How To Become a Follower" with the subheading " Strive for Mediocrity."
It would be a six-week course where people with a GPA higher than a 1.0 would be barred from the class. All Follower-in-Training meetings would begin and end with awkward silence since we wouldn't be sure if the meeting had started or was over. In addition, anyone who uses a polysyllabic word (where we have to clap to count all the syllables) would have to leave the group. Ironically, "follower" is polysyllabic so I suggest you say "lackey." And it goes without saying that if you have a brilliant idea during the class that you can't squash in your head, you don't deserve to be a potential follower.
And of course we would email each other our success stories. In other words, if we found that perfect job where we could be a groveling, brown-nosing, ass-kisser, we would scream it to the world...unless the boss said to be quiet.
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