Reply To: Distinctive Leadership 206- Discussion Board 1

[Amotsuka Caleb]

I love the adage you used – You eat the face first before you eat the food. Though not directly related to leadership, it shows how people generally buy in to things. A meal could be delicious but if it doesn’t look great, people will likely reject it. It’s the same thing with the law of buy-in. A cause may be truly beneficial, but if the people don’t buy into the leader, they may never get on board with the cause.
The quote from John Maxwell that you ended with is very spot on, many times leaders focus on championing a worthy cause which is not bad in itself but they are often shocked when they don’t get the response from the people like they had expected. This usually happens because the people have not bought into the leader.
However, even though the law of buy-in does not necessarily lead to blind loyalty, there is a possibility that blind loyalty can come in when followers go to one extreme in their followership. People can buy into a leader so much that even when the leader starts missing it and derailing, they may not catch it or might even make explain it away. I have been in such a situation before. There was a man of God I really loved because I had never heard anyone as practical and unreligious as him. His messages were so relevant and his heart for the Kingdom was obvious. At a point, I told my family that this is the only man that can make me leave the church I am in if he opens a church in Nigeria. Years down the line, this man started employing some methods in his messages that were unsettling. At first, excuse him because I really loved him and so I said to myself that he probably has a reason for doing this but it continued for so long that I had to really check my spirit and my spirit didn’t align with what he was doing at all. I reluctantly had to stop listening to him but there are many people who still do. I still believe he is a genuine man of God but he probably missed it there. A lot of people however struggle to make such a tough decision once they buy into a leader because sometimes, in their eyes, the leader can do no wrong. This is when the law of buy-in has been taken to an extreme and thus leads to blind loyalty.