By:
John S. McCallum
The
link between leadership, management and enterprise performance is widely
understood and accepted. Improving
leadership improves management and raises the probabilities of better
performance. That boards often change
leaders when enterprises are slipping confirms the importance placed on
leadership.
The
flip side of leadership is followership.
It stands to reason that if leadership is important to performance,
followership must have something to do with it too. But curiously, followership gets only a small
fraction of the airtime that leadership does.
MBA
programs loudly trumpet their leadership development prowess. It is bizarre to even go there but has
anybody ever thought of an MBA program facing the highly competitive MBA
student market with the value proposition:
“Get your MBA at our university; we teach followership better than
anyone else; become a better sheep at our university.” This article is about followership.
Followership
is a straightforward concept. It is the
ability to take direction well, to get in line behind a program, to be part of
a team and to deliver on what is expected of you. It gets a bit of a bad rap! How well the followers follow is probably
just as important to enterprise success as how well the leaders lead.
The
label “excellent follower” can be a backhanded compliment. It is not a reputation you necessarily want
if you are seeking higher corporate office.
There is something of a stigma to followership skills. Pity because the practical reality is one
does not reach progressively more responsible leadership positions without
demonstrating an ability to follow and function effectively in a group. The fact is that in organizations everybody
is both a leader and a follower depending on the circumstances which just adds
to the paradox of the followership stigma.
Followership
may take the backseat to leadership but it matters: it matters a lot! Quite simply, where followership is a
failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed
to get done. Followership problems
manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals,
unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues
and weak competitiveness. At the
extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin
and the consequence is always the same:
organizational confusion and poor performance.
Good
followers have a number of qualities.
First,
judgement. Followers must take direction
but they have an underlying obligation to the enterprise to do so only when the
direction is ethical and proper. The key
is having the judgement to know the difference between a directive that your
leader gives on how to proceed that you do not agree with and a directive that
is truly wrong.
No
one disputes that good judgement is critical to being a good leader. It is just as important in the follower. Show enough good judgement as a follower and
you usually end up getting a shot at being the leader. Something of an aside but there is a line
that I have always liked about judgement:
“Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad
judgement.”
Second,
work ethic. Good followers are good
workers. They are diligent, motivated,
committed, pay attention to detail and make the effort. Leaders have a responsibility to create an
environment that permits these qualities but regardless, it is the
responsibility of the follower to be a good worker. There is no such thing as a bad worker who is
a good follower.
Third,
competence. The follower cannot follow
properly unless competent at the task that is directed by the leader. It is the obligation of the leader to assure
that followers are competent. Sometimes
things go wrong because the follower is not competent at the task at hand. When this happens, leaders should blame
themselves, not the follower. A sign of
poor leadership is blaming followers for not having skills they do not have.
Fourth,
honesty. The follower owes the leader an
honest and forthright assessment of what the leader is trying to achieve and
how. This is especially the case when
the follower feels the leader’s agenda is seriously flawed. Respect and politeness are important but that
said, it is not acceptable for followers to sit on their hands while an inept
leader drives the proverbial bus over the cliff. Good leaders are grateful for constructive
feedback from their team. Bad leaders do
not welcome feedback and here followers have to tread carefully. If the situation is serious enough,
consideration should be given to going above the leader in question for
guidance.
Fifth,
courage. Followers need to be honest
with those who lead them. They also need
the courage to be honest. It takes real
courage to confront a leader about concerns with the leader’s agenda or worse,
the leader himself or herself. It is not
for naught that Churchill called courage “The foremost of the virtues, for upon
it, all others depend”. From time to
time, it takes real courage to be a good follower.
Sixth,
discretion. A favorite saying in World
War II was “Loose lips sink ships.”
Sports teams are fond of the expression “What you hear here, let it stay
here.” Followers owe their enterprises
and their leaders discretion. Talking
about work matters inappropriately is at best unhelpful and more likely
harmful. Discretion just means keeping
your mouth shut. It should be easy but
many find it next to impossible.
Bluntly, you cannot be a good follower and be indiscreet. Everybody who works at an enterprise has a
duty of care; indiscretion is not care, it is careless.
Seventh,
loyalty. Good followers respect their
obligation to be loyal to their enterprise.
Loyalty to the enterprise and its goals is particularly important when
there are problems, interpersonal or otherwise, with a particular leader. Followers who are not loyal are inevitably a
source of difficulty. They create
problems between team members; they compromise the achievement of goals; they
waste everybody’s time; they are a menace.
Loyalty is not a synonym for lapdog.
Rather, its essence is a strong allegiance and commitment to what the
organization is trying to do. Followers
should remember that their obligation is to the enterprise, not a given leader
at a given point in time.
Eighth,
ego management. Good followers have
their egos under control. They are team
players in the fullest sense of the concept.
They have good interpersonal skills.
Success for good followers relates to performance and goal achievement
not personal recognition and self promotion.
Sounds too good to be true and often it is. It is difficult but the best organizations
tie advancement and reward to performance and goal achievement as hard as that
may be to do.
Followership
will always be in the shadow of leadership.
But there are no leaders without followers and on-going success with
weak followers will usually prove elusive.
It is true that an organization is only as good as its leaders. It is also only as good as its
followers. Who would not benefit from
giving some thought to how they could be a better follower? Such thought may actually hasten your trip to
the leadership position you actually want.
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