BY Tim Middleton
At first sight, and on initial reflection, a hippopotamus and a lemming will not appear to have much in common. A lemming is a small rodent usually found in an Arctic environment while a hippopotamus is a large mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. A lemming generally weighs around 24 grammes and is roughly 18 centimetres long while a hippopotamus can weigh in the region of 1 500 kilogrammes. Lemmings have long soft fur; hippos have hairless bodies. Lemmings generally live on land, but can swim great distances while hippos are usually found in rivers, but will come onto land for grazing. Lemmings and hippos do not exactly have much in common — and yet they do!
People often speak (incorrectly and unjustly) of lemmings as being guilty of mass suicide; we read accounts of massive groups of lemmings hurtling off a cliff top into the sea below, apparently without any real thought or care. In truth, when their numbers become so great they look to migrate by crossing water, but many do not survive purely because of the distance to swim. The picture though is of one lemming following another; they all seem to follow the others without any real thought or purpose. They go because others go.
Then there was a popular comedy song a number of years ago by singers called Flanders and Swann entitled the Hippopotamus Song, which had as its chorus, “So, follow me, follow, down to the hollow and there we will wallow in glorious mud”. Hippos love nothing better than to wallow in the filthy dirty but refreshingly cool mud, ideally in the company of others, as then they are all in it together and perhaps cannot be distinguished or singled out.
What these two animals may have in common, through the examples given above, is the desire and even innate tendency to follow. It is easy to follow the crowd, a fact that we as humans find very relevant and identifiable. Children from a young age pick up this trait, not wishing to fight against peer pressure, so even if they are aware that their behaviour might lead to dangerous consequences, they still join in, like lemmings. Adults are no better; it is much easier to swim with the current, to go with the flow, to follow to the hollow and wallow. We follow without questioning, without flinching, and yet it is all too often to our detriment. We do not follow well and yet the vast majority of people are followers. In short, therefore, we need to learn how to follow, as contrary as that might sound.
Some people used to have a car sticker which read, “Don’t follow me; I’m lost!” Such a car sticker could well apply to many, many people. The fact is there are many people we should not follow, however easy it is to follow them, as they will only lead us off a cliff or into deep, sinking, sucking mud. We need to be sure that the person we are following is the right person to follow. Too often society in the form of followers do not think about who they are following and as a consequence they end up in deeper trouble. We must teach our children how and who to follow.
The question is this, therefore: How do we learn how to follow? What ‘followship’ skills must we develop (in the same way that leaders speak of leadership skills)? What must we teach to enable youngsters to follow? To follow, we must learn to be humble; we must learn to trust others; we must learn to help others, warn others and question others. We must know what is true and what is right and not allow others to dictate or determine those to or for us. We must put others before us. Those things do not come naturally to us and therefore we follow badly, unsuitably, dangerously.
In terms of ships we instinctively will think of leadership as the big, domineering, powerful one and ‘followship’ as smaller, less significant, yet the reality is that ‘followship’ is the massive tanker (which can take a long time to stop or to turn from its course), while leadership is little more than the tug which seeks to manoeuvre the tanker into position, to get it moving.
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We must gain a true understanding of ‘followship’ before we entertain leadership.
We must teach youngsters about ‘followship’ and ensure they know how to follow correctly, otherwise when they do lead they will only lead others down the wrong track.
Now is not the time to wallow, but to follow, wisely.
