Followers Have Influence Too!

This month I have been writing a lot of articles about leadership and influence. Why it’s important, how to build it, and how to use it.

Leadership is all about influence and the more we have the better the leader we can be.

But even as followers we have influence.

We can influence the directions that our leaders go in, we can even influence who are leaders should be by voting, but too often we don’t use this influence we feel that we are powerless to change anything, we believe we are too small, too insignificant.

But as Anita Rodick said “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”

Many people believe that the direction that the world is currently going in is not a good one. We seem to be living in a hate fueled fear induced world, where there corruption, gun violence, mass shootings, poverty, terrorism and a perpetual threat of war seem to be the norm.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Whilst our leaders want to point the finger of blame at things like immigration, islamic fundamentalists, terrorism, etc., etc., they actually look to do very little to fix the problem.

Why is that?

Is it because they are part of the problem?

If so, then we have the power to vote them out. But too many people will give up that power and not vote.

But not voting isn’t the same as opposing the people elected, its actually almost like a vote for them.

I saw an interesting statistic yesterday which just left me stunned. In the wake of the Orlando mass shootings there has been an increased call for the banning of automatic weapons and I saw the following meme posted on Facebook.

How can it be that when 90% of Americans are in favor of something, that the government can vote is down.

Now I appreciate that there is much fake information around the internet so in this case I decided to do a bit of research and found this article in the Washington Post which confirms that 90% of Americans and even 74% of National Rifle Association  members support tougher control and yet the bill was defeated because of  91% (41/45) republicans voting against it, as mentioned in this article.

If our politicians refuse to implement the will of the people then we have the power to influence change by not voting for people who refuse to represent us.

Given the direction that the world is going, and that the majority seem to be opposed to it, we should be able to make the changes of leadership needed to change direction.

But it requires everyone to get up and vote. Get your head out of the sand, stop thinking you have no influence because that’s not true, and go vote.

Change will only happen if we influence change.

We have the power, the question is whether or not we choose to use it.