RE: Can a Community be Successful Without Leadership? - A Look At "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
I do believe that we need leaders, but there are too many chefs in the kitchen right now. We have leaders literally everywhere, but many of them are bad, and we need good leaders.
The sad part is that people listens to wealth first and foremost. That has always been the case on STEEM. Ever since I joined in July 2016. You are treated differently depending on your stake. It doesn't matter if you invested fiat or if you abused bid-bots and vote-buying in the past.
Your stake is what matters the most. Recently though, we've started to see these initiatives that are trying to change the behaviour and mindset of some people. More specifically trying to change the voting habit of certain users who's been trading votes with other large accounts since forever.
I am not ready to say that I think they are doing everything perfectly, but it's something, and that is way better than nothing at all.
Those people, behind initiatives like that, are what I would call good leaders, in comparision to users who're still trying to neglect and ignore lesser accounts. We need growth, and growth will come once people truly realize that STEEM will benefit from having healthy seaweed on the bottom of the "steem-ocean".
That being said, people are often two-faced and hypocritical too, so they want to earn more than ever before and increase the price of STEEM at the same time, and that won't happen. They hope that others will do all the heavy lifting for them, due to their stakes and how powerful they are, but many of them fail to realize that their stakes are and will be worthless if they don't change their mindset.
Yes I think it’s unfortunate that our community just immediately think stake = leadership.
I think stake holders are important and seeing that they hold a large amount of stake, they make the decisions etc .. which I am ok with to be honest, to me they were always intended to be the “leaders” in a way. The issue is that investors generally want good leadership and either hire or lift up good leaders that will improve their investment.. I mean that seems like common sense. But it’s not something I see done here.
The issue I see is that we seem to be uplifting anyone who says “steem”.. and yeah if they have stake, they are an instant “leader”. The community is really pretty bad about this.. no real look at actions, just whatever the person says.. that’s what they believe.
I’m always quite confused why our stakeholders don’t really hit this problem head on, as they have the most to lose or gain, but honestly I just don’t think they know how.. they invested in STEEM, maybe they didn’t want to be in the decision making or have to be responsible for the direction etc. But I think what they do with that stake sets the tone here, and therefore they could change the culture as well as direction quite easily imo.
I think we are seeing positive changes and I am hoping for more and more of them.. I just think with no direction or vision we will continue to just spin our wheels.. and see more self proclaimed leaders jump in to make sure they line their pockets.
I wish more cared about STEEM as a whole, as we all benefit when that sees success.
Thanks for the great comment!
I definitely agree with that, but it's actually logical, to some extent. I mean, to be truly effective, leaders must master the ability to influence others. Effective leaders don't just command: they inspire, persuade, and encourage. However, we have Steem Power on STEEM, which is literally the same thing as influence. The more SP you have, the more influence you'll have.
It even says so within the wallet:
Add that to the fact that people are on Steem to earn money and it's easy to see why those with large wallets are the ones who'll be seen as leaders. Good or bad, the majority of the people doesn't really care about that, as long as they are able to earn.
That's also the whole reason for people to chase whale votes. In the past, before HF21, many users earned more from comments than articles, due to upvotes from many of these wealthy accounts. It was easier to get an upvote or two from a whale on a comment you wrote, than to attract more users and build an audience through your own content.