Twitter Leadership Lesson #1: You Follow Me, I'll Follow You

“Tweeting my fingertips to the bone. Somebody stop me!”

I posted that on my Facebook page yesterday. My good friend Kel tried coming to my rescue, commenting “Please don’t do that. I would have to be the one to clean it all up.” She’s a tweeter herself @drippingincolor so she sympathizes with my addiction, but my cousin, Philip, has a completely different take on all the Twitter hysteria.

“Seeing Twitter as a verb, then seeing it conjugated makes me sad.”

To that I replied, “You're fighting a losing battle, Philip. Twitter, tweet, tweeting and tweeted are all here to stay!”

It was only about a month ago that I started tweeting at all, primarily as a means of promoting this blog. Though the traffic generated from my Twitter page has yet to impress, my number of followers @naturalbornldr certainly has. And I’m further struck by how easy it is to do.

I need only follow someone else for them to follow me.

Granted, not everyone who I follow decides to follow me, but most of the time they do. And I do the same with people who follow me. As long as every tweet isn’t a sales pitch or offensive to me or anyone else, chances are I’m going return the follow.

Then it hit me – maybe Twitter has more parallels to real life than we realize just yet, including a lesson or two in leadership.

I write screenplays and recently joined a local screenwriters group here in Phoenix. We’re fortunate enough to have a screenwriter in our midst who has sold numerous scripts over the years. He was gracious enough to read a script of mine and give me notes, which I followed pretty much to the tee. Well just yesterday he asked me to give him my perspective on a script he’s been working on.

After respecting and following his advice, he’s now interested in following mine.

When it comes to leadership, doesn’t the same scenario exist across all disciplines? If you follow the lead of your peers and colleagues – respecting their ideas and participating in their projects with enthusiasm – chances are they’re going to return the favor.

Bottom line: Follow me on Twitter, and I’ll probably follow you.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/london/75869410/