Follow the Leader

Follow the Leader

(first printed in GSAE magazine, JP Harrison 2011)

            “How about writing something on leadership?” came the editor’s request to me.

“OK, but why not something on ‘followership’?”   Leadership is always grabbing the spotlight,” I replied.

            “Followership?”  came the surprised reply from the editor.  “Who cares about followership?”

            “Hmm.  Probably the leaders,” I said.

            The editor replied, “Go ahead.  Suit yourself.  I suppose they’re connected somehow.”

            Yes, they are connected: they’re actually inseparable.    The press wants to cover the leader—the star, the hero—to sell a story, but as a famous leader once said, “if we’re all marching as heroes in the parade, who will be on the curb to cheer?”  All of us have leadership positions as part of most every role we play.  Some get recognition—often unduly—and some don’t. 

            An excellent leader is one who can get others to follow.  In so doing, the leader must know all about followership, not so much on leadership.  It seems we get confused about that.  There’s a lot of excitement about leaders making good or bad decisions, and that makes the history books or at least the tabloid pages.  However, the “rightness” of a leader’s decision is only part of the story.  

In war movies leaders run around barking orders in tough situations.  Granted the “correctness” of what they’re ordering is important, but their success is only partly about the content of the orders.  This “competence” of the order comprises the field of decision science (but let’s decide to follow another lead).  What is even more important are the followers; the followers in this case have been trained to follow the leader’s orders conscientiously in the belief that so doing will prosper the mission.  The art here is on the training of the follower and only partly about the actual competence of leader’s order.   

Though important, such battlefield situations are the exception rather than the rule even in the military.  My late stepfather, a general in the army, told me that—in a non-battlefield situation—if he had to go around explicitly ordering people what to do, then he would have failed as a leader. 

            Let me repeat that.  A decorated US Army leader, one of the youngest and brightest to achieve his high rank, told me that if you have to order folks to do things in other than a battlefield protocol, you’ve failed somehow.  You haven’t understood their followership and how to shape it.       

             Now understanding followers is not some touchy-feely-whatever-goes kind of thing.  Let’s take the example of a dog trainer and his understanding of the dog which needs to be led.  I have it on good authority (some dog trainer dude on TV) that dogs admire a leader who provides consistent discipline, exercise, and affection—in that order.  So, perhaps one of the reasons Aunt Matilda’s little fluffy-piece-of-doodle lap dog is such a terror is because it gets only the last item from that list: affection from Aunt Matilda.   It then becomes a really lousy follower. 

            Why then do we spend all this time on the characteristics of great “leaders” when we should be thinking about building more good followers?   Here’s the answer:  there’s no one to build good followers except, well, other good followers who are willing to be leaders at least for a time.   It’s like the kid applying for a prestigious college who on his application essay described himself as more of a follower than a leader.  The response comes back from the school:  “Congratulations we have accepted you into our elite class of 100 new freshmen.  We felt we needed at least one follower for the 99 self-described leaders.”

            To get at good followership, I believe the dog trainer on TV has some elements we can use.  Good followers need at least three things:

·        Structure (discipline)—people want to know what’s expected of them, what the rules are, what they’re responsible for.  And everyone deserves such clarity and fairness.

·        Something meaningful to do (exercise)—despite some appearances to the contrary, people are at their best when they are engaged in productive activity.  Shackleton, the hero explorer who led his stranded sailors through the long Antarctic winter in 1914, did so by keeping the men busy with assigned tasks as they clung to life on a floating ice shelf.

·        Affirmation (affection)—people want a genuinely supportive atmosphere (not contrived recognition).  At this, some will no doubt point out that avoidance of pain is viewed as a stronger motivator than some type of pleasant community, and this may be true for the short term. However, followers motivated by fear and terror instantly abandon the cause when the fear stimulus is gone.  The speed at which the Soviet Union fell—a union held together primarily by fear of martial reprisal—should not have been a great surprise.  

We have now covered the topic of followership within the deadlines and space allowed by our dear editor (structure).  We’ve been kept busy productively reading or writing (exercise).  And, absent any outright hate mail, there’s normally a warm thought or two generated by this magazine (affection).  Plus my two fine hounds are keeping a benign eye on the endeavor (they have a keen understanding of good followership).  I feel good having followed you through this and appreciate your having led the effort.               

(c) Copyright 2011, JP Harrison, All rights reserved.