Follow the Leader

Thousands of bees were buzzing around us, but the energy of the afternoon came mostly from one person.

She moved among the hives with a calm that seemed to extend well beyond her own body. The bees were active, the children were excited, and most of us were entering a world we knew very little about; yet nothing felt hurried or tense. She set the pace, and everyone else seemed to find theirs within it.

It made me think about how quickly we take our cues from the person leading an experience. Not necessarily through instruction, but through tone. We notice what unsettles them, what interests them, what they make room for and how they respond when the environment around them becomes busy.

Around the hives, her calm did not diminish the energy of what was happening–it made it possible to enter it. The children moved closer, asked questions, and watched the frames emerge crowded with bees. Eventually, one small hand held a bee. We watched the video of that moment many times when we got home.

The buzzing stayed with me for another reason. It reminded me of an email I sent my parents years ago while travelling in Vietnam. I had been trying to describe the traffic, and the word I chose was buzzing.

Motorbikes filled the streets, moving around cars, bicycles, and pedestrians in a continuous stream. There was rarely a clean opening in which to cross, and the advice I received was counterintuitive: walk into it. Move steadily, remain predictable, and resist the impulse to stop suddenly when a motorbike approaches. The drivers are accounting for you as part of the traffic.

So I watched the people who did it every day. They stepped into the street without appearing either careless or particularly brave. I began by following them and eventually learned to cross on my own. What had looked chaotic from the sidewalk was not without order. I simply did not know how to read it yet.

Standing among the bees years later, I recognized something similar. In both places, my experience was altered by watching someone who was comfortable inside an environment that was unfamiliar to me.

We often think of leadership as something transmitted deliberately. Someone gives an instruction, explains a plan, or tells other people what needs to happen. But much of what we learn from the person leading us is communicated before any of that takes place.

We read their response.

A child encounters something unfamiliar and turns toward an adult for a cue. A team encounters a problem and looks to see how the person leading them responds. When we do not yet know how to interpret a situation ourselves, another person's behaviour becomes part of the information available to us.

This is why calm can be so influential, but also why it should not be confused with disengagement. The woman leading us through the hives was paying extraordinary attention. Her calm came from engagement with the environment, not detachment from it. The same was true of the people crossing those streets in Vietnam. What looked to me like confidence was, at least in part, fluency.

Perhaps that is one of the less visible responsibilities of leadership. We are not only directing what happens next. We are continuously providing information about how the present moment should be understood.

People notice what makes us concerned and what makes us curious. They notice whether a complication becomes an emergency, whether a question is welcomed, whether uncertainty creates urgency or inquiry. Long before a culture becomes something that can be written down, it is being communicated through these small responses.

The question is not whether we should always remain calm. There are moments that require urgency, intervention, and alarm. The more interesting question is whether our response is proportionate to what is actually happening.

The person who understands the environment can distinguish ordinary buzzing from the sound that means something has changed. She can remain steady not because nothing is happening, but because she understands what is happening well enough to choose her response.

Everyone else is watching.

And, often without realizing it, we follow.