by Hoang Anh Tran, contributor
When I become involved with a social group, my parents and family ask me a familiar question: “So, are you the one in charge?” They want to know if I’m the one who’s going assume the role of the boss. They always expect me to excel at whatever I do —i n grades, life, career, and my position in society. They ignore the fact that everyone can’t, nor needs to, be the boss.
In 2010, I co-founded my own comic-creating team. I recruited members, set up pages, and encouraged the group to submit our work to a contest, but I backed away from the leadership position. My primary excuse was that I lived too far way to assume all of the leadership responsibilities. My other reason for leaving those duties to another co-founder was that I just didn’t feel myself suitable for the position.
Leadership demands a lot of time, effort, and energy on top of all of the other responsibilities. A leader must recruit new members, be a role model, deal with many different behaviors, and settle internal and external group conflicts. For example, when our comic team posted our first entry to the contest forum, a dispute arose between one of our members and a fellow contestant. Our group leader had to step in and work with the forum’s administrator to peacefully settle the dispute. If I had been leader at the time, I would have lacked both the experience and the emotional maturity to gain the same outcome. I probably would have made matters worse, which would have adversely affected how others viewed our group and our group’s work.
When an inexperienced person assumes a leadership role, the situation can often prove to be too overwhelming. That person runs the risk of drowning in all of their responsibilities or dropping their role as leader completely. For example, on Deviantart, there are millions of groups created for self-help, personal challenges, educational assistance, and role-playing as well as an art collective. However, many of those groups shut down due to a change in administration or inactivity. The group administrators are inexperienced and incapable of keeping the group going and it’s no wonder. It’s uncommon for anyone to succeed on their first try in doing anything.
I find that being in a supportive position comes with its own responsibilities. I’m happy to do my part. In our comic team, my role was to support the group leader by working out the script as the scenarist. I also helped to recruit more members and organized meeting dates and times. I felt every bit as valuable to our group as our leader was. After all, a group or community’s success doesn’t rely solely on a good leader; great members also play a huge part in making a group or community awesome.
