Reply To: Distinctive Leadership 206- Discussion Board 1

[Amotsuka Caleb]

An understanding of the law of buy-in will show that people first buy into a leader’s person before they buy into their vision, no matter what the vision is. This means that even when there is a grand and highly beneficial vision, people will tend not to buy into it unless they have already bought into the leader. Conversely, even if people don’t fully align with a vision, if they have already bought into the leader, they will in most cases still follow the leader regardless. While this provides an opportunity for the leader to develop their character and charisma to get the buy-in from the people, this also poses the challenge of blind loyalty from the people.
People most times make decisions based on how they feel about something or someone and not based on rational thinking. This means that once the people have bought into the leader, there is an emotional attachment that they have to the leader such that even if the leader brings forth a clearly wrong vision, this emotional attachment often clouds clear thinking, and the people will rather make excuses for the leader instead of speaking up to clarify things. While people should respect and honour their leaders, it is never expected that anyone follows a leader blindly. The Lord Jesus is the only person who is worth following blindly because He is infallible, no other leader is infallible. Leaders can make mistakes and while the people following them shouldn’t be critical or judgmental of their leaders, when a leader you trust begins to derail from the right path, you must be able to think clearly and make the right decision for your own safety.
Also, many times when the people buy into a leader, they tend to only look out for attributes in the leader that confirm their emotional attachment to the leader. For example, if such a leader is sexually abusing the people, those who have bought into the leader and are blindly loyal will make excuses for the leader and say things like that is his weakness, or after all he’s just a man. A great real-life example is Adolf Hitler. His people had so bought into him that they were ready to do whatever he asked them to. It’s certain that there were people who were uncomfortable with his vision to eradicate the Jews but because they were following blindly, such people will rather convince themselves that Hitler must be seeing something that they were not able to see and so continue following in blind loyalty.
Following leaders in blind loyalty creates an atmosphere where the followers are not able to speak up to or question their leader. In many cases, a minority may be uncomfortable with the vision but because they don’t want to seem disloyal to the rest of the group, they keep shouting the praises of the leader and following blindly.
Also, because people buy into a leader first before their vision, the people sometimes put the leader on a pedestal where they believe that the leader can do no wrong. In such cases, no one ever asks question about the vision. If the leader says jump, the only question allowed is how high? Sometimes this could be because the leader has demonstrated competence over a long period and so the people now trust his decisions and don’t bother querying it. This could be good in some cases as leaders sometimes have an intuition that the people may not have and so they may be seeing what the people are not seeing at the time. However, because leaders are not above mistakes, it is still important for the followers to be alert enough to know when the leader is missing it so they can prayerfully and carefully speak up or ask God for guidance on how to handle the situation.