“Power should only be entrusted to those who do not seek it.” – Plato
Leadership has been one of the main topics discussed within the management communities in the industry as well as in the political arena. The link between leadership and the performance of a team is well established and understood irrespective of the type of work that the team is engaged in.
One might experience it from the early stages of one’s life within the family and in school. Depending on the cultural and social norms and/or other circumstances the father or the mother or sometimes even an older sibling takes a leadership role within the family. A newborn starts life following his/her parents/primary caregivers first and then continues the learning process by following older siblings, other relatives, friends, peers, teachers, counselors, mentors and other role-models.
During one’s schooling career one will be exposed to sports and other types of competitions, class projects and volunteer work done by different student organisations and/or fund-raising events for the school where the link between leadership and performance can easily be understood.
Sales target
After a successful completion of a task, such as winning a match, achieving a sales target or a particular goal that the team set out to achieve, more often than not, it is the leader of the team who is recognised, highlighted and praised much more than the other team members.
Of course the leader shoulders a bigger responsibility than the others but he/she cannot do it alone. The followers are equally important since the achievements are not possible if they don’t follow the leader’s instructions in an intelligent manner.
Leadership and followership are roles we all play at different times. One can find certain situations where one has to be a follower and certain other situations to be a leader. Therefore, it makes good sense for one to be as good as one can at both followership and leadership right from the beginning of one’s life.
Followership can be described as the ability to take direction well, to understand the program and what exactly is expected of one in order to achieve the goals of that program and to be able to execute the directions coming from the leadership exceeding even the expectation of the leaders themselves. To be known as an “excellent follower” perhaps is not a reputation one necessarily wants if one is seeking higher corporate office.
It is unfortunate that there is somewhat of a stigma to followership skills because one does not reach progressively more responsible leadership positions without having the ability to follow and contribute one’s best effectively in a group.
Blind followers
Another reason for such a negative feeling about the word “followership” could be due to examples of disasters created by blind followers who are sometimes known as “yes men/women”. One of the ways to create “yes men/women” in an organisation, of course, is to have a toxic leadership that expects the followers to do just that.
A leader who is concerned about his/her own welfare over that of the organisation and/or has no concern about the physical, emotional and mental well-being of the subordinates and/or creates a negative culture through his decisions and actions is a toxic leader.
That kind of a leader would expect a robotic compliance from the subordinates rather than an intelligent followership. A toxic leader will be very comfortable with a bunch of “yes men/women” around him so that his decisions will not be questioned or challenged even if the subordinates knew that they were detrimental to the organisation.
This type of blind followers will never be able to become true leaders. They may become leaders through the same kind of systems that made their boss a leader, only more toxic even than their predecessor.
An intelligent followership requires a conscious decision to follow a true leader who inspires hope rather than fear. The combination of a true leadership that can empower the rest of the team and a team of intelligent followers is what creates collaboration and team-work to the truest sense of the words. Lao Tzu has said that: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled; they will say: we did it ourselves”. This will work the same way for a leader of a family, an organisation or even a country.
Competence
Competence is an important characteristic a follower should have, and it is the skill of the leader to recruit competent followers. Honesty of the follower can protect the leader from making mistakes when the follower is given the freedom to express his/her opinion on the decisions made.
Intelligent leaders welcome constructive feedback from the followers. Leaders who feel threatened by the knowledge and the competence of the follower might even be offended if the follower tries to give such a feedback, even though it would prevent the leader and the organisation from getting into trouble.
Therefore, it is important for the follower to know the nature of the leader too. If the situation is serious enough, the follower may even have to consider going above the leader and seeking guidance when the leader doesn’t welcome the follower’s feedback.
Leadership, all too frequently, is reduced to a simple dichotomy of the ‘strong’ versus the ‘weak’. This has become a common practice in political arenas where even the media gets a mileage out of publishing angry pictures of world leaders next to each other or playing sound bites of leaders blaming other countries.
People tend to blame their leaders for economic downfalls and even for pandemics, but rarely do they tend to think and analyse what makes some leaders successful while others fail. Throughout history only a minority of political leaders truly have made a lasting difference. Though most people tend to dismiss more collegial style of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have made the greatest impacts.
Decision-making
Despite a worldwide fixation on strength as a positive quality, strong leaders – those who concentrate power and decision-making in their own hands –have not necessarily been good leaders. On the contrary, the leaders who have made the biggest impacts on their nations and even on the whole world changing millions of lives for the better, have been the ones who collaborate, delegate, and negotiate.
They recognise that no one person can or should have all the answers to problems they face. They are strong enough to put their ego aside and listen to and explore all different views and ideas presented to them and intelligent enough to make the right decision at the right time.
This is an extremely important concept about leadership, especially when it comes to selecting a leader for a country, that each and every citizen should understand. Incompetent leaders who try to govern countries through concepts such as: ‘my way or the highway’ have shown how disastrous they have been throughout history.
It becomes a vicious cycle where toxic incompetent leaders create toxic incompetent followers and such followers eventually becoming toxic incompetent leaders. Perhaps it is time to start leadership/followership training programs and/or to include leadership/followership as a topic to teach in schools and universities together with the fundamentals of leadership qualities whenever and wherever appropriate.
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]