Why good leaders need good followers

Although the role of followership in enabling leaders to lead is well known, followership still doesn’t seem to feature widely within L&D programmes. You don’t hear about companies having followership development programmes. It's not that surprising. There's a lot more focus on leadership than on followership. We’re taught from an early age that we should aspire to be leaders not followers. Most companies are hierachical and celebrate leaders rather than followers. But if you think about it, at any given time within any organisation there are a lot more followers than leaders and the way they interact can mean the difference between an activity's success or failure.

Followers has been stigmatised. The term is often used perjoratively suggesting that you’re part of the herd, one of the mass, a sheep, perhaps even a failure. A necessary prerequisite for leadership is that there has to be a willingness to follow, to allow someone else to take charge. Fundamentally a leader needs followers. Where this leader/follower contract is absent then the leader's desired change or action is unlikely to happen.

Being a follower doesn't mean you have to slavishly and uncritically comply with every dictate. Good followers should be prepared to challenge and to call leaders to account. Followership doesn't assume “robotic compliance” (Gray, 2019). In fact its argued that passive followership, which implies unquestioning obedience, may be as bad for the organisation as weak leadership.

A good follower demonstrates a high degree of maturity, self-confidence and judgement in permitting and supporting leadership. Skilled followers influence and encourage leaders and are consummate team players, able to put aside their own egos in an effort to achieve a shared objective. The relationship between leader and follower has been likened to a dance duo. One person leads, the other follows but both participants are self-aware, attuned to each other and understand that a misstep by one can lead to an overall poor performance.

Leaders can and should also be followers. Aristotle asserted that you can't be a leader without being a follower first. In hiring interviews do we ever ask candidates the question “describe a time when you have been a great follower” or “what does being a good follower mean to you”? If we don't we should. Good followers bring a diversity of opinion and thinking. They have courage and are prepared to stand up for what they believe. They’re not afraid to ask “why”? They collaborate, offer mutual respect and display a high level of emotional intelligence. Sound familiar? Good followers exhibit many of the same traits as good leaders.

Ultimately organisations can’t just expect people to be good followers. Followership needs to be nurtured and embedded in the culture, leaders have to learn to be followers and the message to employees is that it’s ok to be both.

References

 Gray R, (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/is-followership-as-important-as-leadership [Accessed 15 Nov. 2019].