Did you know that today was Followers Day? You didn’t?! Well, maybe because I’ve just designated it!
You, like most people, probably think a lot about leaders but nearly never about followers. Well, I aim to change that. Not that leaders are unimportant. It’s just that they are not all important. Followers matter. Moreover, because there is no such thing as a leader without at least one follower, the latter matter every bit as much as the former.
Which raises this question: Why did I decide that today of all days is Followers Day? Two reasons. First and much, much the most important because today is the official publication day of my new book, Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t!
The second reason is that there are two other pieces on followers, both recently published, to which I wish to draw your attention. Unlike my book, these two focus only on followers during the time of Trump. But be forewarned: as their titles make clear, they do so from a particular perspective.
The first is an article in New York magazine (October 5-18) which is brilliantly argued and even more brilliantly written. It’s titled “The Collaborators” and is by longtime journalist Frank Rich. The second is a quite good but not very good book by Jacob Weisberg titled Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.
I will be writing more about both Rich’s article and Weisberg’s book in the coming days. For today though I’m done. I’m off to celebrate FOLLOWERS DAY!