Leadership is an interaction between leaders and their followers. A leader earns followers when she understands the needs that human beings possess and the ensuing struggle to satisfy those needs.
- To survive, people engage in a continuous struggle to satisfy their needs or relieve tension.
- Some means is required to satisfy a need (tools, food, money, physical strength, knowledge, or other need).
- Typically, individuals satisfy their needs in relationships with other people, in groups, so people in groups become the means upon which we rely most heavily for satisfying our needs. (We do not grow food, make clothes, find shelter, get education, or achieve what we define as success in our lives by ourselves).
- People actively seek out relationships in which the other person is seen as having the means for satisfying their needs.
- We therefore join a group because we hope that membership in that group offers us the means for satisfying our needs.
- Conversely, we leave the group when we no longer feel our needs are satisfied by or in that group.
- Group members accept their leader’s influence and direction when they regard her or him as a person through whose means they will get their needs satisfied.
People follow (and permit direction by) a leader whom they believe helps them get what they need or want. It follows that a leader earns and retains their role as a leader when she or he meets the group’s needs in the eyes of the group members “following the leader”.
– Dr. Thomas Gordon, Founder,
Gordon Training International and Leadership Effectiveness Training (L.E.T.)