Follow the Leader or Tag?

After hearing Dr. Deborah Reeve speak recently, I began to play around with a new connection to the tagging concept: tagging as leadership.
If you will indulge me in imagining the game follow-the-leader as a metaphor for earlier models for hierarchical leadership, then the connections to my previous tag(ing) will become apparent.
Dr. Reeve spoke to students, faculty, alumni, and local community members about the need for reinventing arts leaders. She challenged the audience to think about the importance of becoming a leader in a practitioner's role. She stressed the importance of flat leadership-leaders in the field of art education that don't fit the confines of top-down structure. As I understood these lateral leaders would shift between professional duties, peer/colleague mentorship, community activism, and building relationships with people involved with the arts at many experience and responsibility levels. Dr. Reeve's flat leadership was meant to parallel The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century the national bestseller book by Thomas L. Friedman. (For a quick summary of the book check out The World is Flat WikiSummaries)
Essentially, I have been struggling to find a way to link the game "tag" to my analysis of art education. I found Dr. Reeve's speech the necessary link to my metaphorical processes. In our understanding of "typical" institutional leadership, we follow the person in the front of the line. That person, in turn charts a path that they believe will lead all involved persons to a necessary destination. One problem with this model is the lack of visibility the leader has in the led parties' reactions. How is the leader receiving feedback when communication is merely a matter of following/mimetic response? I am, of course exaggerating and confusing the children's game, follow-the-leader, and the everyday experiences we have as practitioners. In a hierarchical model, communication with administration and other mid and upper level management can become difficult, if nonexistent, due to the designated tasks each involved party performs. While some hierarchical communication is formally facilitated, specific roles and certain types of communication are unlikely in this model. Players that self-designate as leaders or deviate from the leader's path may be kicked out of the game.
What about flat leadership? I can't speak for Dr. Reeve's intended practical application of the ideas she shared, but my own vision of flat leadership that her speech inspired goes back to the game of tag. In the flat leadership world, leadership is passed along in a series of interconnected exchanges of ideas, aptitudes or interests in tasks, and re/forming relationships. In this game, the "leader" isn't seen as a leader, yet all involved parties are aware of each other's positions and interactions. Communication is paramount for the person that is "it" and the people that aren't "it". Each player in this game takes turns being a "leader" and a follower, based on luck and circumstance. The main problem I see with this overlay of the game of tag and flat leadership is the idea of people running away from leadership roles. I'd love to imagine a flat leadership that was a large relay race. I just worry that in a society that struggles for standardization while promoting capitalist consumer individuality, running from lateral leadership might actually be the case. The positive overlay in looking at the game of tag and flat leadership's similarities are the gains in communication. In both instances the functions are dependent on every person involved being aware of all the other people and communication is constantly needed.
I leave you with a final game to consider relating to leadership in art education. What about a game of freeze tag? In this game the person that is "it" tags players, thus freezing them. They can only become unfrozen by being tagged by any active player that is not "it". Thinking about the person that is "it" as represented by the impediments to art educators working together (budgets, bureaucracy and naysayers) and the collaboration and communication needed by the participants to "unfreeze" our friends, perhaps this is the game we should play in our professional lives. When our colleagues are "frozen" by the current impediment to art education, aka "it", we should take notice and run to their aid. In turn, when we become frozen, our colleagues, community, and management will return the courtesy and unfreeze us.
(I hope Dr. Reeve doesn't mind me "playing" with her ideas. I was inspired by the possibilities she presented.)
So which game will we play as art educators?
Follow the leader?
Tag?
Freeze Tag?
or perhaps something else?