Leader, Follower, or Collaborator – What am I?

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – Do you feel most comfortable being a leader, a follower, or a collaborator?

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This is an interesting prompt. Truth is, I’m not comfortable being a leader, though I have done it, successfully, on many occasions. I know this is because I have an anxiety disorder – social anxiety – that makes me kind of flip out when all eyes are on me. Years of therapy and medications have helped me a long ways. Now I know that it’s a disorder and that it’s not just that I’m shy, for example. Turns out, I’m actually very extroverted (which everyone who knows me believes), but that I have this annoying disorder that causes me to freeze in social situations. Luckily, I know this now and can (most of the time) fight past it and get on with what needs to be done. But the end result is that I have a difficult time with leadership. I do it, but I’m happy when it’s over.

But the extroversion makes it really hard to just sit back and be a follower as well. I’ll follow happily enough when something is new to me; my anxiety keeps me quiet. But once I feel competent at something, I lose interest in merely following. The extrovert comes out and sometimes I wind up taking charge. And then the anxiety comes back because I worry that I’ve offended someone or something. It’s a nuisance, really.

I really enjoy collaborating with others. The joy there is that I am treated as equal, but that someone else has to make to phone calls, and get all the permissions that may be needed (say for a grant proposal) and I can just sit back and wait until they ask me to do something. I lend my expertise where it’s needed and am present when needed, and keep out of it otherwise. It’s a nice balance.

The only problem is that when there’s something I really want done, I have a hard time rallying the troops (as it were) to collaborate with me. I’ve submitted a few grant proposals as Principal Investigator and it’s been really, really hard to do it, generally because I can’t get the rest of the team on board adequately and my (stupid) anxiety causes me to not be quite pushy enough to keep everyone motivated.

Thankfully, I’m in a place where people are seeking me out now for potential collaborations (see yesterday’s post). I have a skill that few others have, that is in demand. Not high demand mind you, but in demand enough that I can keep busy and paid.

So does it matter which of these terms (leader, follower, collaborator) are most comfortable to me. I know myself. I’m making it work. I’m happy. That’s all that’s needed.

For 12-4-12