I came into the office early this morning and was glancing through the Economic Times, looking to see if there was something that would trigger thoughts leading to what I could talk about. I came across a headline that caught my interest. It said, "Followers Are Future Leaders!" by Walter Vieira who has written a couple of books (The Winning Manager, Manager to CEO, World Passport for the Global Manager, etc). The caption caught my attention. We talk a lot about leadership but don't really talk about followership.
Followers are important for leaders. They make or break leaders. While there is an incredible amount of stuff written on leadership and good leadership, there is precious little that is written about followers. I thought that it would be good for us to look at the whole idea of following especially in a knowledge-based environment as opposed to manual workers, many years ago in the 50s and 60s, that shift. As Peter Drucker said, "When you move from manual workers to knowledge workers, then expertise can, and often will, trump position as an indicator of who is really leading and who is really following." So the lines get blurred when we take knowledge and the way knowledge is used.
So I began to do a little research and came across an article written probably about 6 years back by Barbara Kellerman in Harvard Business Review entitled 'What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers'. She starts by saying, "There's no leader without at least one follower – that's obvious." John Maxwell, in one of his books, says, "He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk." I think that is attributed all the way back to Confucius.
So I am going to look at this article where Kellerman had some wonderful things to talk about followers. She basically looked at 2 or 3 people who pioneered research in this area. It started in 1965 by Abraham Zaleznik, a Harvard Business School professor. He basically argued that leaders who know more about what makes their followers tick, put themselves, their followers and their organizations in an advantageous position. His premise was that individuals on both sides of the vertical authority relationship matter to how organizations perform. Whether you're in leadership or whether you are following, both of them matter tremendously.
Robert Kelley, in 1992, published an article 'The Power Of Followership'. He essentially urged followers to follow not blindly but with deliberate forethought. He distinguished followers from one another according to factors such as motivation, behavior in the workplace. He finally ended up by giving 5 different followership styles.
But Ira Chaleff, a management coach wrote a book 'The Courageous Follower' where he focused primarily on empowering subordinates and encouraging them to actively support leaders that they deemed good and actively oppose those that they deemed bad. In other words, inviting followers not to be just mindless followers, but saying that if you are following somebody, make sure that person is worth following.
Barbara Kellerman goes on to outline her own thoughts on this and says, "I have a new typology, one that really works on a continuum, that starts from one feeling and doing absolutely nothing to the end, being passionately committed and deeply involved." Engagement is the key here, whether a person is engaged or not engaged, determines the kind of relationship that superior-subordinate would have together. Then within this continuum, she categorizes followers into 5 areas:
1. Isolates: These are people who work in an organization but they are completely detached. They are scarcely aware of what's going on round them, they don't care about the leaders, they know nothing about them. They don't respond to them. They just do their job. They passively follow what the others are doing. But they are actually supporting the status quo and strengthen leaders whether they know it or not. When you look at politics, you see that there are people who sit at home and say, "I'm not voting, I'm not interested in the elections." But a large percentage, whether you like it or not, that didn't vote, really spoke their mind as well. It's not that they haven't let their feeling be known. Somebody once said that decisions are made by people who show up. That is so true. When you go ahead and do something, then you are taking an active part in the course of that particular issue. Isolates really don't bother. They just do their job and then go home.
2. Bystanders: The difference between isolates and was that bystanders observe but do not participate. Isolates do not observe at all. They do not know anything of what is going on.
A couple of weeks back, we saw a picture in one of the newspapers that showed the motorman of one of the Mumbai suburban trains being beaten up by people who were agitated by the fact that the train had run over someone. You could see 2 or 3 people hitting the man, but there was a mob around who were just standing there. Bystanders are like that. They deliberately stand aside and disengage from their leaders and their groups. They refuse to intervene when a crime is being committed. It's called the Genovese syndrome or the Bystander effect. They consciously choose to fly under the radar.
3. Participants: They are engaged in some way. Kellerman says, "Regardless of whether these followers clearly support their leaders and organizations or clearly oppose them, they care enough to invest some of what they have – time, money – to try and make an impact. But participants need to be carefully watched because these are people who are willing to do something and so need to be motivated and channeled in the right direction. When participants support their leaders and managers, they are highly coveted. They are the fuel that drives the engine. But when they disapprove of their leaders and managers, then they begin to act as independent agents and the situation gets very complicated. So when it comes to participant followers and to the other engaged follower types, make sure that you are able to watch them, pay particular attention to whether or not they are for or against you in an organization. She goes on to give an example of former CEO of Merck, Raymond Gilmartin, who was responsible for bringing out Vioxx, which was a painkiller in the early 2000s. It had to be pulled from the market in 2004. The reason that it even came to the market was because the CEO really didn't have any expertise in the whole area of being either a physician or a scientist. So he paid for it. What he should have done was brought in some experts from outside, consulted with them about the knowledge of Vioxx. So you need to know if there are participants acting in areas where you don't know too much. That's a word of caution. You may have blind areas, not very well versed in some areas. Find out who the participants are in that area and then pay attention to that.
4. Activists: They feel strongly one way or another about their leaders and organizations and they act accordingly. They're eager, energetic and engaged. They work hard; either on behalf of their leaders, or to undermine or even unseat them. You need to be very aware of who are the activists in a particular organization. Make sure that they are working on behalf of the organization, rather than against it.
5. Diehards: These are people who are prepared to go down for their cause, an individual, an idea or both. They are deeply devoted to their leaders, strongly motivated either to oust their leaders by any means necessary or to go down to the wire with them. As we look at history, we see people like Hitler who had an ardent disciple in Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels. When Hitler went down, Goebbels took his life with his wife and their six children. All of them committed suicide because they believed that without Hitler, life was not worth living. Be aware of people like that in the organization. They are willing, by definition, to endanger their own health and welfare in the service of their cause.
So, to recap, look at these people as followers in the organization and then, maybe, wherever you are, you may fall into one of these categories as well. Are you an isolate, or a bystander, one who is a participant or one who is a diehard or an activist? Watch out for good or bad followers in an organization. They can make or break the organization.
It was G.K. Chesterton who said, "If a rhino was to enter this restaurant, he would have great power. I would be the first to rise and assure him that he has no authority whatsoever." How true! Great power, bot no authority! There are many people like that in organizations. They have power but they don't have the authority. Power without authority can be disruptive, which is what you will need to watch out for.
Just a word on followers. Maybe you're a follower of a type, because you have people above you. Or maybe you are leading and you have followers. Make sure that you are aware of the followers you have or you are and get motivated or be willing to motivate and channel followers so that the ultimate goals of your organization are met.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, bless everyone on this call. Lord, give us Your wisdom as we seek to look deep into things that sometimes we don't bother about, into why people are following, why they are doing the things they are doing. Help us see whether we can motivate people to follow hard after the ideals of a company or the goals of a company. I pray that we would all be able to do well in those areas, following or leading. I pray a blessing on each in the name of Jesus. Amen.
- Walter Vieira, "Followers are Future Leaders." Economic Times 2nd April 2013
- Barbara Kellerman, "What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers." HBR http://hbr.org/2007/12/what-every-leader-needs-to-know-about-followers/ar/pr
- Abraham Zaleznik, HBR Professor wrote in 1965 "tThe Dynamics of Subordinacy."
- Robert Kelley, "The Power of Followership."
- Ira Chaleff, "The Courageous Follower."
- Former Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin.
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