A Mason's Work

When we look at the work in the craft, there are a couple of different roles that you can take on in your lodge.

One of them is follower and the other is leader. We'll just kind of leave those two out there as maybe the predominant modalities in which with which you can interact in the craft.

There's also solo scholar and stuff like that.

In both the leader and the follower sort of conversations, there's a lot to understand about the roles of each and to look at them as cyclical.

So when you are a follower, you first join the craft, you are a follower, you are there to learn how it works.

And you learn that information from a mentor who is a form of a leader, you learn that from the lodge leadership itself.

You learn that from other people in the organization that have the sort of social capital that allow them to lead the organization.

And in that following capacity, your learning role is to observe and to participate as a full-fledged follower.

That means with full engagement. So you're not just sort of watching from the wings, listening for cool bits of nuggets and wisdom.

You're not here to get the sermon on the mount and walk home and be like, okay, great.

As a follower, it's much more active. You are there to take direction, execute that direction, and in the process of that execution, that's where the learning really is.

So the leadership in the lodge says, let's go run a lemonade stand on the corner and raise money for charity.

Being a good follower means leaning into that at 100%.

It means I will go do those things, not sitting in the wings going, well, I don't think this is going to work.

I think it's a bad idea. Or subtly sabotaging it because it doesn't agree with your idea or what have you.

So first things first, you have to become a good follower.

And then you get to try your hand at leadership. And leadership means delegating and giving work out to folks.

It means setting a vision and becoming the part of the orchestration of the future.

You become this sort of future builder.

It really helps you learn to develop your people skills. So what are the roles and responsibilities of the individuals that are here to help you?

How can you best leverage them and make them feel seen and heard in the process so that you can get better outcomes in the long term.

So you take that leadership role and you grow and that is also great.

And then what you really, you know, you've got that leadership thing down for a little while, you feel like you got it.

Now you have to go back into follower role.

And you kind of keep repeating this cycle. And every time you do, you learn more about both.

So your first year as a follower after you've been a leader is really quite difficult because you know, the new guy is going to do things differently than you did.

And you have to follow that at 100%. So look for the opportunities to do this.

Know when your role as a follower has matured enough that you're ready to take another shot at being a leader.

And know when your role as a leader has is now beginning to suck the oxygen out of the room because that happens.

And that you need to step down and become a follower when you, you know, and there's subtle shifts and signals for all of these things.

I'll give you a couple quick examples, right?

As a follower, if if you keep being asked to do things the hard way and you know a better way.

And you've been unable to communicate that up the food chain to the leadership.

Maybe it's your turn to get in line.

If you find that there are better ways to solve problems than you have, then, then they're doing or maybe you think they're solving the wrong problem with what they're trying to do.

These are all indicators you need to get out of the follower chair and start your process to get into the leader chair.

As a leader, if you find that no decisions can be made without you, that's a failure leadership, but we'll get into that.

As you start to find out that no one else is stepping up because you keep taking care of it.

Or that people are not engaging diplomatically or in some sort of democratic process with the conversations you need to have to lead.

That likely means you have sucked all the air out of the room and you need to step down.

If there is no meaningful path forward for folks past you, like there's no way to grow folks because they're not getting in line.

You need to create space for people to step up and get out of the way.

These are a couple kind of quick and obvious and easy examples.

They probably will not stand much scrutiny, but you get the idea as you've been doing this for a little while, you start to figure that out.

Going back and forth from these things is really a sort of a prime mechanic for growth and development.

So don't disregard getting in line in your lodge and getting out of line in your lodge and doing that several times over the course of your sort of Masonic life as part of your growth and development path.

It is a great way to pursue becoming a better man.