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/

There's a Natural Born Leader In Us All

We're all born with the potential to fulful our goals at will. We need only visualize them, then take the necessary actions to get there.

Yet conventional education teaches us otherwise -- that you have to struggle and "pay your dues" before you can succeed. That's why it's so important to bring to any leadership role you may have, in your professional or personal life, a fresh perspective on accomplishing goals.

There is a natural born leader in all of us. We need only listen, learn, visualize and do to inspire the same in others. That is my goal with this blog, which I invite you to help me with.

I'm looking for natural born leaders to feature in this blog. If you'd like to share your experience and thoughts on leadership, email naturalbornleaders1@gmail.com and I'll send you a list of questions. Plus, I'll include in your blog post your photo or logo of choice, as well as a link to your website, blog, Twitter page, Facebook page, MySpace page or any other online presence you would like to promote.

If you’d like to know when this featured post goes live, Follow This Blog. I’ll also tweet about it with a link to your featured post, so Follow Me on Twitter too. The sooner you know your post is live, the sooner you can share the link anywhere that you'd like to reinforce the leadership role you play in your profession and/or community.

By the way, if you're not a member already, you're invited to join my Facebook Group where you can connect with others in the Natural Born Leader community.

"Since we're integrally connected in consciousness, no one individual can evolve far ahead of everyone else. We are all contained within a certain field of consciousness. Though we may take a role close to the leading edge, we cannot leave our fellow beings far behind since in essence we are all one. So we have no choice but to evolve together, bringing all our brothers and sisters along with us." ~Shakti Gawain, The Path of Transformation

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosimoes7/1301014184/