I would say my natural instinct is to follow someones lead but I can, will and have stepped up if I need too. If I’m in a group that I feel like lacks that leader position then I will step into it without hesitation but if there’s a clear leader then I’m very happy following along.
I also like different things about each, when I’m a follower I feel like you feel more apart of the team dynamics and people who are also followers will tell you things that they wouldn’t tell the leader since they’d be worried about upsetting them or just their strong opinions, since leaders tend to be opinionated.
Of course that can be a good thing and it can be bad as well. I feel like I’m just more connected to others when I’m following along, which feels nice. I am also quite relaxed in general and after doing a couple of courses that had group activities and we were told we had to give everyone feed back, I was told I had a calming effect on the group, which I liked.
When I did a really long personality test once, it came back to me and told me I was a mediator, so basically someone who doesn’t like conflict and tries to calm things down.
With leading, I like what comes into it sometimes is the teaching aspect, sometimes this doesn’t come up but I like it when it does, I enjoy teaching someone how to do something and it feels good when they look to me for advice and the way you can direct conversations and the groups actions.
I don’t do this often since like I said before, I’m more interested in being a follower but I still enjoyed my short time as leader in small activities in small groups, if I see there is no clear leader I’ll step up to the plate, making sure everyones shared their ideas and everyone is listened too because I think as a leader, thats the most important thing you can do.
Now that I think about it, I’ve only ever had a proper struggle with someone who also wanted to be a leader while I was at University (Full rant incoming, sorry!) essentially she did none of the work, I ended up doing all the prep, writing a script, finding a place to film and finding student actors as well as doing a plan for all of our camera shots, then she turned up on the day of the shoot and wanted to boss everyone around and tell me I couldn’t film some shots I’d planned and not explain why properly and not budge even when I tried to compromise and say we both could do the shots we wanted and decide which was better in the edit but she still didn’t want me to film my shots and for the first and last time (Yeah I’m usually a very relaxed quiet person ha) I actually ended up shouting at her and we ended up having a big argument in front of the actors which was definitely embarrassing.
I have a lot of stories about her but that can be left for another time, I won’t name her of course but its been quite a few years since University yet I still get annoyed when thinking about her. I suppose I can hold long grudges ha!
TravelCD 
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