If you scan around on LinkedIn, or other business focused Social Media and publication platforms, you can find quite a bit of information on leadership. How to be a better leader, which leadership styles are most effective, what behaviors, how to overcome resistance to change, etc. If we have that many leaders hunting the web for information, we must have a bunch of followers out there too, right? People that follow the flag? A great article about the conditions required for successful followership?
Following… Yuck
I don’t like the idea of following. Perhaps most don’t like it; I think we all appreciate autonomy and a level of control over the precious few days we are spending on Earth. And while I was scanning articles on leadership… The ones I found from an ’employee perspective’ were on how to deal with narcissistic leaders, micromanagers, controlling team leads, leaders that are hard to work with. The general advice in those articles is: adjust, get over your ego, or quit. Being a follower seems terrifying.
Taking that into account, why would it be a good idea to think about what makes you and me great followers? First, we need to be aware that leaders alone do not yield all the success, they contribute about 20% of it in fact (based on a cross-quantitative study, link below). Also, how can you be a great leader if you do not know what it takes to follow? In understanding what makes great followers, the right conditions can be set to achieve a higher percentage contribution to success. Maybe you and your team can take some time with your leader to discuss that. Wouldn’t that be great?
I wish all teams were able to take some time with their leaders and talk about these conditions for good followership and would set the code of conduct on that together. To help you out, here is an agenda for that meeting, where you can see some – what I consider core – conditions reflected.
Who and What
Of course you are now filled with desire to follow your leader, you can’t wait!!! (sorry I fell into a sarchasm) All jokes aside, you are not only following your leader, you are following a plan for your department, function, plant etc. Could even be that you have contributed to the plan. The more you understand the what, the better you can support the who in charge of it. Plan some time – if not in place already – with your leader to go over what is important this year or this month. Connect the plan to your team’s day to day work and/or projects. Great for measuring success more objectively.
Autonomy and reporting
Just because you are following does not mean you are some sort of lemming blindly walking into a pit where you will plummet to your death. A good follower has autonomy over their work, meaning that you can be trusted to deliver a good result on your own and that you are able to manage your agenda and tasks. The only thing you need to do is agree on how to report: some leaders need more detailed information than others. You could discuss that: talk with your leader about what the boundaries are in which you can operate freely, what to ask leadership support for and what reporting on work is required.
Collaboration and widening perspective
There is no I in team, there is only a ME! Great followers understand the power of collaboration. Chances are that you achieve your success working together with each other, other functions, departments, teams. In order to collaborate well, you need to be able to voice what you need and speak up when you are not getting it. And thereby accept that others might voice not getting something from you. Silo thinking is terrible: others are always wrong, do not understand anything, communicate poorly, and are just general idiots. We need to work on stopping that, thinking like that is not helpful. What you can do is to consider the suppliers and customers of your work. Who are you getting stuff from to start your work and who are you delivering to? You might even have suppliers and customers in your own team. You could create a SIPOC and discuss with your team and leader how to best manage those relationships and who should be on them. Agree how to uphold one another to it and provide feedback on how it is going.
Creative thinking
A good group of followers is like an extra set of eyes and ears on the ground. The more you have moved up the chain, the less you know about what is really going on. It is called the iceberg of ignorance.
This is something you need to realise as a follower, but your leader also needs to realize that. How funny the iceberg may seem, it is a good thing that your leader does not see everything. What kind of hovering, annoying, micromanaging person would she be if she was able to see it all? You as the followers have a gap to fill there, and the best way to do so is to do team based root cause analysis on issues.
Chances are that you see issues way before your leader does, and if you can’t solve them yourself, if you need others, or if the problem is persistent, discuss how to flag it and arrange such a team based problem solving event. Maybe flagging these issues can be part of your team meeting agenda. Maybe you have a fixed spot on the calendar with your team to do team based root cause analysis. If you have no issues, you can use that spot to do other work, if you have issues, you have time scheduled to work on it together. Formulate the problem well using a fishbone diagram & 5Why. A leader could be a great facilitator of such a session. Talk about how you want to approach this as a team and perhaps even build your problem-solving skills.
Your next leader
I can think of many more things to discuss on followership with your leader, and could fill many more articles. I think this is already quite something to start with. In any case: great followers make great future leaders, they take ownership, bust silos, improve collaboration and solve problems together. I would not mind being a follower in a team like that.
For those who did not get the sarchasm joke:
