29: Would You Rather Lead Or Follow
This episode was recorded just a little later in the day than usual because...apparently Tricia won an auction? What? So this episode begins with her story of…their option to own a real live “bicycle built for two.”
Her 13-year-old son Tyler was reticent about even getting onto the bike with her—he knew his mom could ride a bike, but he’d never had to share an axle with her. He is quite “risk-averse,” and blames this entirely on his Uncle Rob for putting him in the front seat on the Space Mountain at Disney World before he even knew what the ride involved. (Uncle Rob feels bad about that too, in retrospect.)
Tricia’s take-away lesson from tandem bike riding? It’s a good test in leadership and trust! Particularly if you’re in the second seat where you cannot steer; the back-seat rider has no choices except to keep pedaling and to trust the driver. Tricia shares this and other wildly practical lessons learned in this experiment. (And also, they decided to pass this bicycle ownership opportunity along to the very next buyer.)
But, who would guess there could be leadership lessons tucked into this wild experiment? Tricia raises these related-but-unrelated questions for discussion:
Would you rather lead or follow, and what makes you want to do either of those?
When you decide, ‘I can follow this,’ what kind of leader are you choosing to follow?
And, when you decide, ‘I can lead this,’ what kind of followers do you need?
Rob’s and Tricia’s leadership experience—and followership experience as well—provides good fodder for great discussion between them on the topic.