Follow the Leader? I Don’t Wanna!

In the spirit of full disclosure, the answer to the question posed in the title came from a child I know.  That was their spirited reaction to any direction they didn’t agree with.  To the Type-A leader, or Alpha-Leader, there is a similar reaction.  Leaders want to lead.  Many leaders have very large egos.  Some would say they must so they can lead organizations through turbulent times.  A question popped into my mind a couple of weeks ago – do good leaders also need to be good followers?

I’ve long thought about this question and have come to the position that I believe good leaders can be some of the best followers.  I wondered if I was alone in thinking this.  Late last year (2021), I stumbled across something in my daily Bible reading that got me thinking.  I was using “Every Man’s Bible, New International Version.”  This version is rather good.  One thing I like is that it includes commentary from the editors in ways different than other Bibles I’ve read.  I liked reading the periodic one-pagers entitled “Someone You Should Know” which highlights a person in the Bible.  In 3 John, the editors highlighted Diotrephes and focused on a single verse: “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us” (3 John 1:9). Their point of highlighting Diotrephes was “good leaders honor others; bad leaders praise only themselves.” (Every Man’s Bible, page 1637)

This inspired me to do some more research on followership, as it’s related to leadership.  I started with a simple web search – “are good leaders good followers?”  I didn’t know if I’d find anything good – boy, was I surprised!  There were a lot of great things.  Three things stood out to me:

• A blog post by Michael Hyatt entitled “Why the Best Leaders are Great Followers – Five Hidden Attributes That Command Respect”
• An article published by Forbes: “To Be a Great Leader, Learn How to Be a Great Follower”
• A Harvard Business Review (HBR) Leadership Research article entitled “To Be a Good Leader, Start By Being a Good Follower”

I’ve mentioned Michael Hyatt a couple of times before, so you’re probably not surprised I liked his blog post!  In this post, Hyatt lists three characters in the Bible who started out as followers and became great leaders in their own right – Joshua, Elisha, and Peter.  Hyatt lists five characteristics of good followers.  These characteristics make great leaders (in my opinion):

1. They are clear.
2. They are obedient.
3. They are servants.
4. They are humble.
5. They are loyal.

Forbes and HBR are two popular business publications.  The author of the Forbes article (Bernhard Schroeder) shares his Four Rules of Following:

1. You’re not following, you’re a leader-in-training.
2. Put your team first.
3. Believe in yourself and your leader.
4. [It’s] what you follow, not who.

These are very good rules for following.  I think they also come in handy in training a leader.

I really enjoyed the HBR article.  I used to subscribe to the HBR, and looked forward to reading each edition.  A sentence in this article really stood out – “without followership, leadership is nothing.”  The authors reported on their analysis of emergent leadership among 218 male Royal Marine recruits who embarked on the elite training program after passing a series of tests of psychological aptitude and physical fitness.  They examined whether the capacity for recruits to be seen as displaying leadership by their peers was associated with their tendency to see themselves as natural leaders.  The results of their analysis were staggering.  Those who saw themselves as natural leaders were viewed as having leadership potential by their commanders.  But the recruits who saw themselves as followers ultimately emerged as leaders.

These three articles support the premise that to be a good leader, you must learn how to be a good follower.

I developed a reputation as a good follower.  For the most part, I am a conformist.  However, there were times in my leadership career when I was a poor follower.  Two times stand out to me.  One of my bosses, while delivering my performance feedback one year, said that he appreciated that we were mostly aligned in our approach to getting results.  He told me 95% of the time we were aligned, but that other 5% was quite ugly!  Ouch, that hurt.  I worked on being more diplomatic with him and ended up on a positive tone.

One of the lowest points of my career happened partially because I wasn’t a good follower.  I didn’t fully establish a positive relationship with one of my bosses.  I didn’t fully understand her expectation and missed many cues to her dissatisfaction with my performance.   This resulted in my removal from that position – the only time that happened to me.

I learned a couple of lessons about leadership and followership:

• Being a follower under a poor leader is tough.  When you believe leadership is heading in the wrong direction, express your concerns in a respectful, reasonable manner.  If your opinion isn’t accepted, follow anyway.  Don’t say “I told you so” if it doesn’t work out.
• Being a follower when you wanted to be the leader is also tough.  In my last job, I wanted to be promoted to the leadership of the group and never was.  I missed out on the promotion three times and ended up training my new boss two out of three of those times.  This was very humbling.

I strongly believe that good leaders can and should also be good followers, but not all good followers can be good leaders.

How good of a follower are you?  Do you struggle to follow when you don’t appreciate the leader’s vision or direction?  If you are a leader, I challenge you to read the three articles I’ve cited.  Develop your own opinion.  Let me know what you think.