I Am Not Here To Lead
I was scrolling mindlessly on Substack (why do they have that feed function when you want to read stuff but it ends up being another place you’re scrolling?), and I noticed everyone joining in a challenge of someone who had recently, and a little behind the curve, joined the platform.
Their original post launching the challenge was full of the words about getting to know each other and about community, but also about sharing really far and wide - which is code for “I need this to grow”. It was authoritative, strategic thought leadership and I thought “thank god I don’t have to do that”.
I am not criticising this person, or any person who wants to grow on a platform, who wants to lead in a particular space. I just, as I saw all these posts popping up, felt so relieved that this person was doing all of this, so I didn’t have to.
And that was when I realised that I don’t want to lead.
In the late 2010s, the online business world spoke in terms of empire. You had to “own your space”, “take leadership of the conversation”, “demonstrate your expertise”. You had to walk into an online party and start banging pans together and say “hey, HEY, look at me and listen to what I have to say”. You could do it sweetly, a bit less obviously, but you had to do it.
You could do it with hashtag challenges, with spamming people with posts and comments, with content churn, with making it absolutely vital that people needed to learn the thing you taught. But it was fine, it wasn’t icky because it was valuable. And yes there was some value, but I find now, looking back, that it felt like a lot of barging and jostling be on top.
I felt it keenly, this need to be leading. This need to be a go-to person - I know I have agonised with friends over how I could be the go-to person. I remember the stabs of jealousy and lack whenever I heard anyone talking about anything remotely similar to what I talked about.
You know when you are on a train in a station, and when the train next to yours starts moving it feels like your own train is sliding backwards, like a break has been let off and you are free wheeling back the way you came? This desire to lead felt like that, the pit of the stomach nausea and dizziness of sliding, with no reprieve of the end of the neighbouring train shaking you out of it. It was disorientating, worrying about whether you were respected enough, and whether someone else, somewhere, was making better points.
But I wanted it, because… how to finish that sentence? Because ambition. Because it was what was needed for success. Because other people were going to try and have it so I had to try and have it. Because that was “the only way” to make money. Because I never questioned it. Because I never thought of what else might be possible.
I hadn’t noticed how much that desire to lead a space had ebbed away until I saw that person with their Substack challenge and waited for the rollercoaster stomach drop of “oh quick, I need to do something too” but instead got “thank god I don’t need to do that”.
“Need”. That’s the interesting word. It wasn’t even “I don’t want to do that” - because I could not want to, but still feel I needed to. I didn’t need to do it because I didn’t need to lead, because my work has moved from thought leader/business/marketing/coach person, to artist. I don’t need to do the challenge because what I need to do is write. That’s my work, and the rest will come from that.
I am not here to lead. What a relief.
