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Before I turn to this year’s selection for Follower of the Year, two pieces of business. First, how I define “follower.” Then a comment about last year’s selection.

In leadership studies the word “follower” has forever been difficult to define. First, in comparison with “leader” and “leadership,” the words “follower” and “followership” are rarely used. Seems everyone is endlessly interested in leaders – and in being a leader. Seems nearly no one is interested in followers – and nearly no one wants to be one. Followers are seen as being passive and weak, in contrast to leaders who are viewed as active and strong.

Still, in the real world as opposed to the imagined one, there is no leader without at least one follower. And, in the real world as opposed to the imagined one, it’s impossible to be a leader for any length of time and ignore your followers.

I define followers by their rank – not by their behavior. Followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than their superiors and who therefore usually, but not inevitably, fall into line. Simply put, in my lexicon followers usually follow, but not always.

Last year my Follower of the Year was Alexei Navalny. In February he died, of unexplained causes, while incarcerated in a remote Russian prison by his nemesis, Vladimir Putin. My post, which appeared a year ago today, concluded as follows:

Some of the world’s greatest leaders were once followers in that they spent time behind bars – Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, to name a few. But each was eventually released – even Mandela who was locked up for more than 27 years. Whether Navalny will ever again be a free man is, at best, uncertain. Meantime he can take solace from his mission which has already been accomplished. The near successful attempt on his life, his relentless tribulations and repeated trials, and now his apparently unending captivity are charges against his captor that will stand forever.

This year the Follower of the Year is the Democratic Electorate. This year the Follower of the Year is not, then, a single individual, but a group. A loose group of ordinary people, most of whom have little or no power, authority, or influence, but who are nevertheless resisting those with vastly more. The Democratic Electorate is generating “a crisis of democracy” precisely because, though they are expected to go along with the leaders they selected, large numbers are refusing to do so. They have, moreover, become relentlessly carping and critical. Drawing on changes in culture, and in technology, followers are far quicker than they used to be to diminish, demean, and deride their leaders – those more highly placed than they.

Evidence of resistance and rebellion is everywhere. A majority of voters across seven Western countries including the United States believe their democracy is in worse shape now even than five years ago. And in nearly every democracy at least half of all voters say they are “dissatisfied” with the way the system works. Further, majorities agree the system is “rigged” in favor of the rich and powerful – and that “radical change” is needed.

Freedom House found that in 2023 “global freedom declined for the 18^th consecutive year.” Why? Because “global freedom” is not giving the people – the Democratic Electorate – what they think and feel they need and want.

In Europe the evidence is everywhere. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently lost a vote of confidence in parliament and is likely to be defeated in the next elections. French President Emmanual Macron has repeatedly suffered stinging defeats; now there is speculation that he will resign before the end of his term (in 2027). In Britian, the track record for prime ministers is even worse. Recent residents of 10 Downing Street – Teresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – have been unable to hold on to power for long. (Truss lasted just six weeks.) And the present prime minister, Kier Starmer, is, after five scant months in office, more unpopular than any UK prime minister has been in forty years.

Who has benefited from the widespread dissatisfaction? The far right. Large swaths of the Democratic Electorate now support leaders who previously were outsiders, such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Georgia Meloni in Italy. Same in France and, notably, in Germany. Because of its Nazi legacy, for 75 years right wing parties in Germany were essentially verboten. Now the stridently far right Alternative for Germany (AfD), is the second most popular party in the country.

Nor are non-European democracies an exception to the general rule. In Canada the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has morphed over the last decade from golden boy to laughingstock. (According to a poll taken this month, 73 percent of Canadians think he should resign, now.) In Japan the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority for the first time since 2009. And in South Korea the president, who was so foolish as to discount his followers, was recently impeached.

Evidence the Democratic Electorate is fed up is nowhere as strong as in the United States. Donald Trump’s reelection as president for a second term – despite who he is, what he has done, and what he has not done – underscores the point. For now, at least America’s Democratic Electorate is profoundly anti-establishment, anti-elite. It is composed of followers who are furious – furious at their leaders – so they resist and rebel against those who traditionally have held power and authority.

Explanations for why this is happening abound. They include extreme and still expanding income inequity; divides between urban and rural, and between white people and brown people; the transitions from an industrial economy to an information economy and now, to an AI economy; wokeness that became as enervating as exhausting; dated and broken systems and institutions; immigration, globalization, polarization, alienation, and atomization; and, perhaps most importantly, the vanishing if not vanished American dream.

Obviously much if not most of the Democratic Electorate does not feel that democracy – and its al-important conjoined twin, capitalism – is working for them. And so, they, we, lash out. It’s impossible to lash out at an abstraction, such as an institution. But it’s not impossible to lash out at something concrete, such as an individual. So, the Democratic Electorate, followers, is taking out its anger at the Democratic Establishment, leaders. Which is precisely why a man who presents himself as, and literally is, an outlaw, and as anti-establishment, will soon be inaugurated president of the United States, again.

Two weeks ago, Time magazine selected Donald Trump as its 2024 “Person of the Year.” A week later, the Financial Times did the same, bestowing on Trump the identical title, “Person of the Year.” Time pointed out that Trump’s “rebirth” was “unparalleled in American history.”The Financial Times cited a longtime Trump acolyte, Roger Stone, who proclaimed, “We are living in the age of Trump.”

But their selection is silly! Trump Person of the Year in 2024?! Give me a break. All the man managed to do in the last twelve months was to get reelected president of the United States. OK, I’ll grant it was not a small success. But what he’ll do when he moves back into the White House, not to mention what he’ll be able to accomplish, remains uncertain. Besides, that’s next year, not this one.

My selection as Leader of the Year 2024 is obvious. So glaringly, blindly, obvious, that I’m sure you’ve guessed it. Elon Musk.

Some of you might remember from previous years that my selection for Leader of the Year is based on only one criterion – impact. No matter if the impact is positive or negative, good or bad, the single question that pertains is which leader was most impactful during the twelve months preceding.

Musk is an exceedingly rare bird – a leader who leads in more than one lane. He is so singular a leader that not only does he lead in more than one lane, he does so simultaneously.

Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in business – and in politics. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in the United States – and around the world. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is (by far) the richest man in the world – and because he has one of the world’s biggest megaphones. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in technology – and in industry. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change on earth – and in space. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change in human intelligence – and in artificial intelligence. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is exceedingly ambitious – and because he is exceedingly aggressive. Musk is an immensely powerful agent of change because he is a genius – and an activist.

In 2024 Elon Musk decided to make the reelection of Donald Trump a pet project. I do not claim that Musk is single handedly responsible for Trump’s triumph. I do claim that Musk’s support was important, very important. He poured over a quarter of a billion dollars into Republican campaign coffers which made Musk the single largest underwriter of a political campaign ever. Moreover, he used his name, and his fame, and X, which he owns, regularly and relentlessly to make Trump’s case. Finally, like Trump, Musk’s relationship to the truth is, shall we say, fluid. This came in handy as Musk regularly repeated whatever Trump’s lies, first and foremost that he, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election.      

As Musk greased Trump’s palm so Trump greased Musk’s. For weeks after the election Musk effectively took up residence at Mar-a-Lago, the president elect’s palace in Palm Beach. For weeks after the election Musk served as one of Trump’s closest advisers. For weeks after the election decisions were made about how officially to embed Musk in the machinery of government. And for weeks after the election Musk felt increasingly entitled to intrude not just on the workings of the executive branch but on those of the legislative one.

But does Musk need Trump to leave his stamp? Not at all. It helps that Musk now has an official role in Washington. That he, along with Vivek Ramasamy, has been anointed co-leader of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency.” Still, it’s impossible to tell how that will go. Anyway, my point is, no matter. Musk’s fingerprints are already all over the federal government.

The New York Times describes his influence – his influence now, before Trump becomes president again – as “extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative.” An example: Musk’s rocket company, Space X, “effectively dictates” NASA’s rocket launch schedule. Another example: Musk’s companies have already been promised some $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 different federal agencies.   

There is much about Musk that is not admirable. He has had 12 children with three different women and seems largely absent as both partner and father. He is known in recent years to have used drugs including LSD, cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy and mushrooms. He and Space X have reportedly repeatedly failed to comply with protocols aimed at protecting state secrets. He has a reputation as an erratic, excessively demanding and sometimes bullying employer. And now he is inserting himself, regularly and sometimes outrageously, into politics both at home and abroad. At home he posted over 150 times on X to demand that congressional Republicans reject a bipartisan spending deal crafted to avoid a government shutdown. And abroad he strongly aligned himself with Germany’s far-right party, the AfD, which has ties to neo-Nazis and has been classified by the German government as “confirmed extremist.” Notwithstanding, Musk posted to X, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

Impossible to say for how long Musk’s now knee-deep involvement in domestic and foreign politics will last. But if it does not, no worries. He’s got plenty to keep him busy. His companies include but are not limited to 1) Tesla; 2) Space X; 3) X; 4) The Boring Company; 5) Neuralink; and 6) xAI.

You might not love or even like him. You might not admire or even respect him. But no matter. In 2024 no leader had as great an impact on the planet we inhabit than Elon Musk.

Who knows why the mainstream media failed to level with the American people? Failed to tell us the truth about how frail and feeble Joe Biden was during the entirety of his presidency.

Ideally, we would anyway have known. Ideally leading Democrats, among which I include members of the House and Senate, should have said, publicly, that under no circumstances should Biden run again in 2024. For neither his physical nor mental health was up to being chief executive of the United States of America for another four years.    

Thanks to outstanding investigative journalism by four Wall Street Journal reporters – their recent piece was based on some 50 interviews – we are finally getting a sense of how, from day one of his presidency, Biden was protected from prying eyes by family and close aides. But we the people were not protected. We were not informed and so remained ignorant of Biden’s failing health until we saw for ourselves, in his “debate” last June with Donald Trump.   

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was the wife of President Woodrow Wilson. After he was felled by a stroke, she thought to protect him by concealing from nearly everyone his true condition. But that was then – in the early 20^th century when veils of secrecy and silence still shielded the high and mighty. Now though such niceties are supposed no longer to exist. Now the American public is supposed to be told if the president is failing.

Here is some of what we did not know in 2021, or in 2022, or in 2023, or for most of 2024.

• That during the 2020 presidential campaign it was suggested to Jill Biden she limit her activities, so her husband would not seem sluggish in comparison.
• That visitors to the Biden White House were instructed to keep their meetings short and focused.
• That even the most important members of the president’s cabinet – for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin- saw him only infrequently, or very infrequently, especially during his second two years in the White House.
• That Biden often depended on top aides to serve as stand-ins.
• That these same aides shielded the president from negative press coverage.
• That even as the 2024 campaign ramped up, Biden was not in touch with his own pollsters.
• That limits were set on to whom Biden spoke, on what he was told, and on what information he was given.  
• That Biden had good days and bad days. That on his bad days he could not remember key lines or simple instructions, such as where to enter and exit a stage. Similarly, on some bad days meetings were simply canceled. 
• That during his four years in office Biden held only nine full cabinet meetings. (This year was only one.) This in comparison with, for example, his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, who held 25.
• That Biden engaged in far fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of his seven predecessors. President Barack Obama had 570 in total – this in contrast to, as of last summer, Biden’s 164.
• That Biden was kept at a distance not only from the press but from Congress – and from some of his own aides.

It can be argued and often is that during his one term Biden chalked up an impressive list of accomplishments. But the Democrats were unable to capitalize on them in the election. And now Biden has essentially exited the national stage while his successor is already front and center. The incumbent president has evolved into an exaggerated version of what he has been all along: not so much a lame duck as a missing duck.

People need a leader. People want a leader. The American people are no exception. We need a president. We want a president. But even during his four years in the Oval Office Joe Biden was more spectral than palpable – while Trump was and is the opposite. Trump was never an absence – even in exile he was a presence. Now as throughout he looms.  

I like the idea of a “leadership class.” It’s not a phrase I coined, but rather columnist and commentator David Brooks. I first noticed he used it several years ago – it reappears big time in a piece he wrote for this month’s Atlantic. The article is titled, “How the Ivy League Broke America: The Meritocracy isn’t Working. We Need Something New.”

When Brooks uses the term “leadership class” he refers to the “meritocracy” that’s in the title of his piece. Or he alludes to the “elite,” another word he uses interchangeably both with “leadership class” and “meritocracy.” At one point in the article he asks, “Did we get a better elite?” At another he lists the “six sins of the meritocracy.” And at still another he concludes, “It’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites.” In short, Brooks uses “leadership class,” and “meritocracy,” and “elite” synonymously.

My intention is not to criticize Brooks’s writing. Instead I am asking if those who constitute America’s “leadership class” are different from – or should be considered different from – those who constitute America’s “meritocracies” and its “elites.”

My question is about definition. Not so much the definition of a meritocracy, or of an elite, as of a “leader.”  As anyone who has been – as I have – around the leadership block for years knows, the words “leader” and “leadership” are plagued by literally hundreds of different definitions. Usually though by no means always the word “leader” refers to someone who is in a leadership role. And usually though by no means always the word “leadership” refers to someone in a leadership role who is controlling or directing their followers.

But not every member of either a meritocracy or of an elite is in a leadership role or is exercising leadership. To be at the top of a meritocracy means you have clambered up the ladder due to your intelligence, skill, or ability. It does not mean that you necessarily are controlling or directing anyone. Similarly, an elite. You are in the top tier of some group or organization because of some attribute or asset you have, not because you are in any way, necessarily, engaging with others.

Let’s be clear. Leadership is a relationship. You cannot be a leader without at least one follower. The same does not however apply either to those who are members of meritocracies or of elites. In neither of these cases is any relationship necessary or implied.

Let’s not, though, throw out the baby with the bathwater. The idea of a “leadership class” is valuable – as is the term. So, let’s confine members of the leadership class to those who are in a leadership role and, or, who get others to follow where they lead. In most cases leaders get their followers to follow because they, the former, rank higher than the latter. But in some cases, leaders get their followers to follow without the privileges and advantages of rank, of title. So long as Cindy can get Sam to go along, she is a leader, and he is a follower. But once Sam balks, once he refuses to do her bidding, it’s over. She has dropped out of the leadership class.

In recent days some of us have had the excruciating if vicarious experience of bearing witness to evil. Specifically, evil ordered by Syria’s ousted leader, Bashar al-Assad. The most infamous example is film taken at Sednaya Prison, not far from Damascus, where Assad’s government detained tens of thousands, torturing and killing them as the New York Times reported, “on an industrial scale.”

What happened in Sednaya is without exception described as crimes of which Assad was guilty. Which he was.

But let’s be clear. He did not – he did not literally – commit these crimes. So far as we know Assad kept his distance – he did not personally torture or kill anyone. Instead, the pain and suffering were inflicted by his followers. By people who in other circumstances might have been perfectly normal, but who in this circumstance committed crimes of obedience.

There is a considerable literature on obedience to authority when authority is bad. Some of the best-known works are based on social science experiments conducted in the 1960s and ‘70s by, most famously, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.

But for all the knowledge that’s been accumulated since then about followers as agents of atrocity, it remains easier for us, much easier, psychologically, to attribute evil to a single individual. To the leader. Why? First, because it simplifies a process that is exceedingly complex. Second, more importantly, because it lets us, people like you and me, off the hook.

We prefer to think that good people would never, could never, turn evil. But the evidence suggests that what we prefer to think is wrong.

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Note: The phrase “agents of atrocity” is the title of a book by Neil Mitchell.   

A week ago, most people did not know the name Bashar al-Assad. Since then, the man who was president of Syria for almost a quarter century is known to almost everyone everywhere who follows the news. The overthrow of him and his regime, which had ruled Syria with unmitigated brutality, has been cause for cautious celebration both at home and wherever else in the world repression is reviled. Among other sins against Syrians, Assad tortured tens of thousands in brutal prisons and used poison gas as punishment for going against him. He was, as I wrote in an earlier post, “the worst of the worst.” A totalitarian tyrant. 

This brings me to my present point – which is that the leadership industry ignores nearly entirely the Assads of the world. Nearly all leadership courses and programs, centers and institutes, books and videos, focus on developing good leaders. Nearly no leadership courses and programs, centers and institutes, books and videos, focus on precluding bad leaders. On coming to understand how bad leaders happen – Assad was able to subjugate more than 23 million people – so that we can learn how to stop or at least slow them.*

I have been studying bad leadership – and bad followership – for over a quarter century. My most recent book, published earlier this year, is titled, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers. This year I also published an article in a journal, Leadership, titled as is this post, “Bad Leadership – Why We Steer Clear.” Anyone curious to know why the leadership industry has for the entirety of its approximately 50-year history avoided the dark side, should click on the link below.

*The fact that Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria for almost thirty years is relevant to the reign of his son, though not to the point of this post.

President-elect Donald Trump has more malleable a mind than he prefers to project. On the surface he seems certain of every syllable he speaks, persuaded by the truth of his every word. But in fact, he is not. He changes his views or adapts his stance as circumstances dictate. On abortion, for example, over the years Trump has been consistently inconsistent.  

To this general rule there is, however, an exception. An exception that amounts to an idee fixe – an idea so firmly fixed over so long a period it has become a conviction, even an obsession. Whether this obsession conforms to the truth or not no longer matters. To Trump it feels true, so now it is true.

The idee fixe to which I refer is the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s truth is that four years ago he, not Joe Biden, won. Anything that threatens this truth, and anyone who questions it, is anathema. It, they, drive Trump nuts. They threaten his identity which is that though he might be many bad things – an inveterate fraudster, a chronic liar, even a convicted criminal – the one thing he is not now and never was, is “a loser.” Trump cannot bear the idea that he would ever lose any competition, including an election, to anyone.

His psychological vulnerability on this issue was in full view again this past weekend, during his “Meet the Press” interview with Kristin Welker. He was calm and measured on the subjects of, for example, tariffs, immigration, and Ukraine. He was neither calm nor measured on any subject relating to the 2020 election. This included the congressional committee tasked with investigating the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol. In discussing the committee Trump became animated and his face furious. He especially attacked committee leaders Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, saying that both did something “inexcusable,” saying that both “lied,” and that both should “go to jail.” As to the rest of the committee, all were “political thugs,” all were “creeps.”

Should we care that Trump has an idee fixe? That on this one subject, the outcome of the 2020 election, his ego remains frighteningly fragile? Yes. For if ever the second Trump administration does engage in retribution, it will be in this one area, on this one subject. It will be against anyone who dared to challenge his conviction that he won against Joe Biden. And against anyone who dared to question anything he said, or did, between Election Day November 2020 and Inauguration Day January 2021.

Americans are accustomed to violence. But this particular murder was a shock. It was a street crime all right, but an unfamiliar one. This one seems a targeted killing and this time seems the target was a leader. A leader of national repute, the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest healthcare insurers. The dead man’s name was Brian Thompson, he was 50 years old, a husband and the father of two.

Several things distinguish Thompson’s death from that of other murder victims. I’ll name three. First, his assassination, in front of New York City’s Hilton Hotel, led to a nationwide manhunt that still has not been resolved. Second, his prominence has meant his murder made and continues to make national news. And third, his violent death led to feelings of sadness and dismay – and to ones of fury and frustration. Fury especially not at the killer but at his victim.

The murder was a stunner – and so has been the response. The Wall Street Journal said the “online jubilation” over Thompson’s death was a “new low” in social-media culture. The New York Times headline claimed the “rage and glee” in response to Thompson’s killing was “alarming.”  The Financial Times quoted a lecturer at Columbia University who tweeted, “Today we mourn the deaths of 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.” And experts in online threats were said to be “pretty disturbed” by the “glorification of the murder” of Brian Thompson and the “lionization of the shooter.”

What are we to make of this? So far, the explanation for the “rage and glee” at Thompson’s death has been attributed solely to the glaring deficits in America’s healthcare system – exemplified and personified by the nation’s healthcare insurers. Thompson was an industry leader who is presumed to have been assassinated by a furious follower. A follower furious at UnitedHealthcare for denying his claim and ruining his life.

Maybe. But maybe not. Unless and until the killer is caught, we can only speculate, we cannot know. And even then, can we trust the killer to tell us what motivated him? Can any man know what makes him a murderer?

Meantime, large numbers of ordinary people are so angry at what’s gone wrong that for them the murder of a leader is a source of satisfaction. Seems to me though that the anger is less specific than it is general. That the anger is less about the healthcare system than it is about the system generally. About a system in which the few who are very, very, very rich are forever getting richer while many of the rest are struggling to stay afloat. The likelihood is that Brian Thompson was murdered not because of what he did but because of what he stood for.             

No, I am not an oracle. I did not know three days ago, when I posted the piece of the above title, that in a flash would be pushed from his post Syria’s longtime tyrant, Bashar El-Assad.

I was though signaling the Zeitgeist, the mood of the moment when people in positions of power best watch their backs lest they get stabbed in the back. Not literally, of course, Though just last week was shot in the back – literally – the CEO of Unted Healthcare, Brian Thompson. But stabbed in the back metaphorically – as just last week was for example Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger is the once widely admired CEO of Intel who, after a disappointing performance, was sacked so far as we can tell as suddenly as unceremoniously.

But, back to Bashar. No need for me here to describe him in detail. Suffice it to write he was among the worst of the worst. He was not among the cast of characters in my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse. But heaven knows he qualified.

Furious followers are a force to be reckoned with.

• Lesson learned by South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol.
• Lesson learned by Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.
• Lesson learned by United States President Donald Trump?

For suddenly declaring martial law in a country recently grown accustomed to democracy, Yoon was faced with riots in the streets and in the National Assembly.  Moreover, within hours his own People Power Party voted unanimously to strike down his infuriating imposition of martial law. Now Yoon is hearing calls, loud calls, for his impeachment. The rapidity with which he was forced to pay the piper was as if his followers had read Leadership from Bad to Worse. As I write in the book, the sooner bad leadership is stopped not only the better to do, but the easier to do.

For his draconian crackdown Kobakhidze plunged his country into chaos. The flash point was his government’s decision to delay any attempt to join the European Union. But the real issue is a far larger one – the tension between autocracy and democracy. Georgia’s scant acquaintance with the latter makes it hard to resist the former, promulgated by its neighbor, Powerhouse Putin. But Kobakhidze’s Putinesque tactics will continue to face resistance – which will continue to require he use force to shut his followers up.

For some of his outrageous nominees to Cabinet posts and other top jobs, Donald Trump is facing blowback. Polite blowback. Cautious blowback. Blowback behind closed doors. But blowback, even resistance, nevertheless. Trump has become accustomed to getting his way. Specifically, with members of his Republican Party who have been nearly entirely supine for nearly a decade. Almost without exception they have been willing to do his bidding. But if I were him, I would not assume that past is prologue. If I were him, I would watch my back and clutch my crown.

Added note: Silly me. I did not foresee – this happened just a few hours ago – that in keeping with the point of this post, France’s Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, would be ousted from his post barely three months after taking office.