
Everyone wants to be a leader to make the key decisions and position you well above the others. As a leader you get the most credit when things go well. You will also get the biggest blame when things go wrong.
Yet, few people understand that to be a good leader, you first need to be a great follower. Good followership is not about being a passive patsy, sitting back into victimhood, instead it’s about partnering with those who are leaders that can make great things happen for you and your organisation.
If all are leaders, nothing gets done. Being a good follower isn’t about being one of hundreds of lemmings that execute instructions with blind loyalty. Today’s followers are more evolved and have the ability to contribute significantly. Some followers are in fact more capable than the leader. Good followers judiciously choose who they follow and make followership part of their education. In an increasingly democratised workplace followers are more empowered than ever before.
Being a follower is about being strategic and choice-driven, taking control of your career and empowering yourself at work. It’s “managing up,” by embracing subtle changes that increase your ability to thrive with the boss you have, and not the boss you wish you had.
The best followers don’t see themselves as another cog in the corporate wheel. They know what they are doing. The corporate world has changed completely. Some followers advice leaders on strategy and policy direction though in the organisational hierarchy there are people higher than you. They know what their peers are doing. They even know what their leaders are doing and what they are good at and what they are not so good at. They know because they have to know to be a good follower. The best followers aren’t really followers. They recognise themselves as future leaders who are already contributing at leadership level.
Swapping roles
The best followers are also the best team-players. They know one truth: they are only as good as the team. When you make personal sacrifices for the good of the team, you are broadcasting the message, “I care about ‘us’ more than ‘me’.” That sort of selflessness hardly ever goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Team players are the “glue” that keeps the team together. Their leaders count on them. Their peers confide in them. Everyone else likes them.
The best followers have confidence in their abilities and the abilities of their leaders. They don’t need to be told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. They just get things done. They also know, and expect, that their leaders will get things done too. It’s a mutual trust that keeps the work engine humming along nicely. As a good follower, you have the courage and confidence to respectfully discuss with your leader if you believe you are not going in the right direction.
You trust that your leader would appreciate the spirit of your input and engagement. To be a successful leader in the future, you will need competent and confident followers. The best followers don’t just follow a leader; they follow the leader’s mission or vision. The leader is but an embodiment of that purpose. Followers become die-hard advocates when their personal passion and purpose are aligned with those of their leader. As a leader, you will be able to see yourself as no more than a follower and advocate of a mission, one that is much bigger than you. Such a perspective will allow you the humility to see past yourself and focus on your future.
So what, you might say. Being a great contributor is doubtless important but it’s a separate business from leading. Is it? No not anymore, now, thanks largely to the social development and the other empowering forces of technology, the lines between leader and follower are blurrier than ever before with the two sometimes blending into one another and other times swapping places.
Though you may be the best follower, your boss has a lot of influence over your career trajectory, and you need to understand that. Managing up is something everybody has to do. Get over your own ego and get past your own perspective. A lot of times we get caught up in what we think is right.
Take a good look at yourself and decide where you are willing to adapt and where you are not. If we wait for the boss to adapt to us, some of us will be waiting a long time. It’s natural to look at the world from your own perspective, and your boss may see the world from a different angle. Being a good follower means opening your mind and understanding that the world may look different to them.
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.
Leaders are vulnerable
Leaders today are vulnerable, as never before, to pressures from once-mute followers. Reporting relationships are shifting, and new talent-management tools and approaches are constantly emerging.
To be a true great leader in this new world, you need to have a real and profound appreciation for followers and their power, and the willingness to take the follower role when the time is right, which can be tricky if you are too invested in the idea of being the leader.
No doubt, if you are a business owner who is keen to lead and interested in the subject for good rather than egotistical reasons and you want your business to thrive, your employees to be happy and your stakeholders truly benefit. But what if the traditional prism of “leadership” is actually an outdated way to think about those goals? Increasing power of followers is very visible in today’s environment and bound to grow.
Followers in the old world were like slaves – taking instructions, saying yes to everything the owner or the leader said and literally worshiping. A large percentage of followers today are more knowledgeable and skilled than the leaders. Leaders cannot survive without such quality followers.
Leadership and followership are closely intertwined. Effective followers can shape productive leadership behavior just as effective leaders develop employees into good followers. We are generally a little too focused on those at the top at the expense of the all-important supporting cast. An obsession with being “the leader” can actually make those at the top less effective.