Elizabeth R
Why Do People Follow You?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 209: Elizabeth R
Here’s a question. Why do people follow you?
In the last month, my mother died and the mother of my country died.
Loss makes us look back. And look forward. And it’s encouraged me to ask two questions.
What made me who I am?
And who do I want to be for the rest of my life?
We all live with narratives in our head. Who we are and what made us this way. Those stories we tell ourselves inform how we respond to situations and how we meet opportunities. They shape what we think is important and what we think isn’t. They shape whether we are kind or scared. Whether we are brave or angry.
But for most of us, those stories are wrong. Or at best filled with half truths.
And we have much more opportunity to write them again than we realize.
Life is filled with agency. The ability to write our own story. To decide who we want to be and then to act on that basis.
And once we do decide, then comes the really hard part.
To declare it.
To say out loud to people who we know will judge us, this is what matters to me, these are the expectations I have of myself and the standards to which I hold myself.
“I declare before you all, that my whole life - whether it be long or short - shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
I joined millions of others last weekend and stood and watched a mile-long procession of over 3000 men and women escorting the coffin of a dead Queen to her final resting place.
During her 96 years of life, it is estimated that Queen Elizabeth II met over three million people.
I was not one of them.
So why did so many of us travel so far and wait for so long and weep as her coffin passed in front of us?
Why was her televised address at the beginning of COVID more calming than any pronouncement from any politician or medical authority?
Why does her tea party with an animated bear cause so many tears to fall even from the eyes of people who know how the illusion was made?
The answer, I believe, is simple.
We could depend on her.
We could depend on her commitment to a position about which she had no choice and no chance for escape.
We could depend on the constancy of her behavior.
We could depend on the fact that, in 96 years, there is not one story, not one, or her saying one thing and doing another.
We could depend on her never making it about her. Everyone else did. But she did not.
We could depend on her to be there.
Until, suddenly she was not.
And the loss takes my breath away. And that of millions of others. Who never met her, either.
Because now that she is gone, what do we have to depend on?
And the answer is ourselves.
Which sounds easy. And we know is not.
But I can tell you from experience, of my own and those I have worked with, that it is possible.
It starts with honesty about who we want to be.
And then requires that we declare that. Out loud. And if we behave on that basis, people follow. Because they can depend on you to put their interests first.
Next week, we’ll be back to talk to the living about the living.
Thanks for listening.
