Encouraging followers to step into the light

It’s estimated that there are over 15,000 books in print on corporate leadership in the English language alone. And many more out of print sitting on shelves in forgotten corners of offices all over the world, with pages slowly foxing.

I started work in 1990. The year Germany reunified, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, the Hubble space telescope launched and Encyclopædia Britannica saw its highest ever sales. It was also the year Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web - even though I was just getting to grips with a fax machine.

Suffice to say, it seems like a long time ago...

And on my first day in an office on Guy Fawkes’ night of that year, the opening gambit of the graduate programme was that leadership was the one thing to which everyone should aspire. We were all to become leaders. Everyone. And we were going to be trained in new skills that meant we would be brilliant at it. And if you weren’t a leader, you were a no one. Bring on the fireworks…

Now, I’ve never done any soldiering, but even back then it seemed to me that if a battalion was full of Generals a whole lot of very important things would never get done.

And through my entire career, sadly, little has changed.

Over the last 30 years I’ve worked in mining, waste, renewable energy, construction, oil & gas, not-for-profit, security, prisons, consulting, telecoms and investment banking. And today, information and analytics. I have led some people, led some teams, led some projects and helped lead big organisations through major crises and massive upheaval.

But mostly, I have been a follower. Like everyone else reading these words. Someone who follows their boss, and their boss’ boss and ultimately the company that employs me. I do following 95% of my time at work. Never forget, before anything else you are a follower, whether you like the sound of it or not. And the role of followers is to help their leaders - particularly in moments of weakness. My word, did I say leaders have moments of weakness? God forbid.

So why did no one ever teach me how to be a good follower? Why have none of us in Western-based organisations ever been on a followership course? And why is there practically nothing written about it? Anywhere.

If you Google 'followership' you get just over a million results. Try 'leadership' and it's over 2.6 billion. It’s a gaping lacuna in organisational theory. I’d like to start the conversation to fill that gap.

If you’ve got this far and are still interested, then read on. But be warned, it might get a bit uncomfortable.

"Never forget, before anything else
you are a follower, whether you like the sound of it or not"

"As a leader, your best days aren’t realised because you did good leading. It’s because your people did good following. It’s the zenith of narcissism to think otherwise"

Of course, no one wants to admit they’re a follower. It sounds career limiting. Much better to be a global head of something – ‘punctuation’, perhaps, for someone like me in the world of communications. Maybe I’ll ask…

Just go to LinkedIn, for a laugh, and see how many people inflate their profiles to make themselves sound like global leaders. When they really aren't. All these amazing leaders - but leading who exactly? Imagine how refreshing it might be if we were to read on someone's profile that they were a darn fine follower.

Nothing ever comes from, or of, those who follow in an organisation. It’s the brave heart out front, waving the flag and spouting leadership jargon who should get the glory, right?

So people clearly feel an overwhelming need to distinguish themselves from who they perceive as sheep. How uncool to be just a sheep like everyone else - blindly obeying instructions. Stumbling around on a hillside with no purpose. Just waiting for something or someone to create a sense of urgency and a reason to get moving.

This is the image of a follower that springs from leadership pedagogy.

But it’s a myth. Fake news of the most damaging kind for any organisation.

Great leaders, when we can find them, are only successful because they create an environment where their team can be exceptional followers. As a leader, your best days aren’t realised because you did good leading. It’s because your people did good following. It’s the zenith of narcissism to think otherwise.

So, develop as a leader all you like but if you don’t make good followers along the way, you’re doomed.

But here’s the rub. You can only make good followers of your people by being a good follower yourself. People follow the behaviours of people they see as successful you'll remember.

Rediscovering followership means doing some digging. The good news is it’s digging inside to remember what you should be doing when you come to work. So, you don’t have to look too far.

The uncomfortable truth though is that when we do that soul searching, we uncover the blindingly obvious need for some seemingly unfashionable traits these days such as loyalty, reliability, self-reliance, integrity, poise, perseverance, patience, thoughtfulness, responsiveness, fidelity, optimism, sacrifice and courage.

Let me show you.

The best followers turn up no matter what. No matter how hard things get they stand strong. They believe in their choice of whom to follow because they trust themselves to have made the right choice in the first place. They know what they need to do to keep the faith. They know what they have to put up with sometimes and they know that if they show their support, they can help change things for the better, even if it may take time. Think of the millions on the terraces and in the stadiums each week at sporting events around the world. Well try to remember pre-COVID at least.

How many people at work think like that? Few. Why? Because they have abdicated responsibility for their initial choice to join that organisation. They have drifted into a place where they feel justified in blaming others, usually leaders, for their own lack of success. But instead of either taking responsibility for change or moving on, both of which require courage and self reliance, they stay and hope that one day they will be the leader and everything will get better.

It’s understandable, because it’s the path of least emotional resistance. No one likes to think they have made a bad choice and when confronted with the reality they might have, they go into denial.

But to follow well requires skills, attributes and behaviours that many have forgotten how to use in the workplace, because we have been distracted by the promise of leadership and lured away from the obvious.

Followership means toeing the company line, following the ethical codes, ceasing the moaning, knowing when to challenge your boss - and when not to. It means relying on yourself, doing what you are asked to do but doing it better than expected. It means thinking about the broader context of your work, sometimes accepting that others know more than you do. It means never talking poorly of others, ending zero-sum games, seeing your boss as an equal and having their back - even if you aren’t entirely sure they always have yours. It means seeing colleagues as partners and not as competitors. It means keeping yourself informed, turning up no matter what and doing your best no matter how tough things become. And, it means staying calm in a crisis, being true to yourself, treating people as you would like to be treated and doing the right thing.

But above all, it means following your heart.

"To follow well requires skills, attributes and behaviours that many have forgotten how to use in the workplace, because we have been distracted by the promise of leadership"

"Groups with many leaders can be chaos. Groups with none can be very productive"

On average, based on modern-day spans of control, only about one in eight employees in any large organisation are managers of people or what we might describe in some way as ‘leaders’.

So, do we leave the destiny of our workplace entirely to the decisions of so few? Of course not. Let’s face it, leadership is what others do to you. Without wanting to sound like a revolutionary in a dodgy beret, isn't it time more of us retook control of our work life by becoming good followers and know that doesn't mean we are subservient to others’ whims.

Investing in leadership skills would seem important. But wouldn’t investing in followership make more sense? Given we know 100% of people at work are followers one way or another. All these followers contributing. Imagine the power they would unleash if they all did it as well as they could?

As Robert Kelley wrote in the Harvard Business Review back in 1988 (before even I started work) - "Groups with many leaders can be chaos. Groups with none can be very productive."

Disappointingly, there hasn't been much decent writing on followership since.

I’m not saying that leadership skills aren’t important, it’s just that they are not as important. Step back for a moment, take a breath and let that thought sink in. The more senior you become, the more honed your followership skills have to be. After all, you are following fewer people and it’s much harder to hide. So, if you want to get on, learn how to follow.

Which brings us on to the amount of money we invest.

Leadership training is expensive. Very expensive. Upwards of £2,000 per person per day is the going rate. It’s a demand thing. Everyone wants it so it’s a perpetual race to find the latest approach based on a questionable root in popular or academic psychology. And, when someone comes up with a new ‘thing’, the fad spreads like wildfire through the consulting and training community and the costs spiral.

And more worrying still, recent research shows that a whopping 58% of leaders out there in the big wide world say they have never received any leadership training. So I take that to mean that most leaders in the workforce were promoted because they were simply good at what they did, and not necessarily good at helping the people around them to be more effective.

Followership, by contrast, is more organic. We already know how to do it. We just forgot. Because we were all too busy trying to be leaders. So, training in followership starts with unlearning the bad habits and modelling those who do it well. It’s kind of like copying - only smarter. It means unpacking all those little things that make a difference and making use of them yourself, in your own way.

It's worth a ponder, don't you think? After all, how many times are you presented with a chance to get on at work which is wholly within your control?

Like I said at the start. There isn’t much written about followership. But if this paper has interested you, you may want to read what Harvard Business Review thought 32 years ago...