Leadership Lessons from Leadership Village

The “first follower”

This incredible real life video triggered a zillion thought waves for us here in the tiny, but comfortable office of Leadership Village. Like the proverbial “Pied Piper” we are following our good friend Fabio (program manager – LeadCap) and he is teaching us many useful lessons, which is surely going to have a very big impact on Leadership Village and its Young Leaders Programme. Today Fabio shared with us a unique leadership theory of the “first follower” by showing a leadership video from "You Tube".

After watching the inspiring and unique video of the dancing man, Fabio shared with us a few interesting thoughts on leadership and how a vision is turned into a reality by perseverance and creative passionate action.

The dancing man without the shirt initially looked all nuts with his crazy acrobatic movements. Instead of stopping with shame as initially he was not applauded, but in fact he was neglected, he kept on dancing and after a while he was joined by the “first follower”. This indeed is the defining moment as it was proven that the dancing man was not alone and he was elevated to the post of a leader. The “follower” then played an instrumental role in bringing more followers and within seconds the lonely man act became a movement.

This evening we had a lively discussion and it went like this. In Fabio`s words a person who possesses a vision can be considered as the dancing man. Initially no one might mind him, he might be mistaken for being insane, he might be ridiculed. The vision is only a vision for the man himself. Suppose if someone starts eating wood and no one follows him until he die no one would know about his vision of wood as an eatable dish and he perishes without leaving a trace on this world. But if he succeeded in creating followers, of course his vision becomes a reality, he is a leader, a visionary and no longer would the world call him nuts.

Now, when we come to think of the evolution of Leadership Village, which Is just a 3 year old baby, we are happy that we have been able to convince a few individuals and organizations  the greatness of The Village`s vision. But initially we were doing the mad dance here in Wayanad, just the two of us. We got quick result with the children and youth here, but many turned a blind eye on us. “Leadership” was a new term for the education system in Wayanad. Like the dancer in the video we had to invent many new steps, we had to shift our image of language trainers to leadership trainers. Teachers and students wanted us to make them speak and write English, but nobody approached us to help them change their sloppy lifestyle, no one approached us to redefine the destiny of one of the most neglected places in Kerala state, no one approached us to ask why we are doing this ridiculous dance which not at all visibly benefited us, in their viewpoint . But with each dancing movement our strength only gained and soon followers began to emerge, they became leaders, news stories began to be published, television reporters interviewed the leaders, and people slowly stopped asking this question “ what do you benefit from this?” because the dancing group has started gathering momentum. One important lesson  we personally learned today is of the “first follower” How important it is to empower the ‘first one” who had shown that much courage to come up and how important it is to make him an equal and how important it is to gift him the greatest earning of life “SELF ESTEEM”

This is our very first video blog and we are much grateful to the unknown dancer, and our sincere gratitude to Fabio, who took all the trouble to come here in Wayanad and meet us all. We also are happy to thank someone who doesn’t need any introduction in Leadership Village at all, our dear friend Sangeeth, who always made it a point that only the very best should be given to us. Be it an opportunity or be it a gem of a person like Fabio.

Greetings from Leadership Village

Laila and Anil