The digital and print media is awash with content about leadership. And I’m one of those contributors!
I rarely see an article about followership, unless it’s from the perspective of a follower complaining about poor leadership!
I assert that followership is as crucial as leadership. We can’t have one without the other.
They are two sides of the same success coin!
Followership is what’s mostly missing from team development. That is because team development is spoken about from the leader’s perspective.
Followership is about how best to support the leader in their shared quest for goal and vision achievement whilst upholding the shared values.
Followership is not about blindly obeying the leadership, but contributing, co-creating and even challenging the leader to help achieve the vision.
That means the leadership understand and provides the best conditions for effective followership.
I make three additional assertions:
- Great leaders are also great followers, whether it’s following their own values and vision or whether they’re following someone else’s or receiving orders from ‘higher up.’ They not only know how to lead, but they also know how to effectively follow.
- Great leaders are skilled in creating the conditions for great followers.
- Great followers are created by developing them firstly as potential leaders, then developing them as effective followers with a range of best followership practices.
Traditionally you’ll notice that leaders are developed as a leadership cohort and followers (team members) are developed as a team cohort.
I advocate that leaders and team members (their followers) experience leadership development together firstly, then together experience follower development, including the science and skill of team development for these benefits:
- People who train together bond together – increasing the know, like and trust component.
- All members realise they are valued and are of value.
- Emerging leaders are identified, inspired, and motivated.
- Followers choose followership with more knowledge about what’s expected of leaders and how best to support them.
- Leaders learn directly from and with their people how best to lead them so they can be great followers.
- Together they design the real workplace projects to demonstrate their newly acquired skills and insights to directly benefit the organisation and achieve a measurable return on investment.
- Saves time and money!
Just as there are copious theories about leadership, so there are copious theories about followership.
I help my clients use the techniques of leadership and followership learnt from years of working with teams of highly trained professionals in high risk-high stakes situation, often remotely, across the military, law-enforcement, another discreet agency and as a CEO and managing director of both private and public companies in Australia and Europe and 25 years of coaching directors and CEO across both the private and public sectors.
If this article resonates with you and you’d like to improve followership capabilities in your organisation, schedule a call with me, to see if we can work together.
