Good Followership: Why a Good Follower Is as Important as a Good Leader
There is something Terrie once said to me that has stayed somewhere in the back of my mind for many years: “A good follower is as important as a good leader.” At the time, I don't think I really stopped to think deeply about what she meant. It was one of those comments you hear, understand more or less, and then life carries on. But lately I have been thinking about those words again, particularly because leadership has become such an enormous subject in the business world. We talk endlessly about good leadership, but perhaps we don't talk nearly enough about good followership.
For more than twenty years, I had an unusual seat from which to observe this. My wife, Terrie Anderson, held senior positions in technology and cybersecurity, and over those years I heard many phone calls and conversations, witnessed meetings, met colleagues and executives, and of course heard about the successes, frustrations and difficult decisions that are part of business life. I want to make something clear because it matters to how I write about this subject: I am not a leadership expert, and I'm certainly not presenting myself as a followership expert. I was a witness. Perhaps being a witness gives you a different perspective. You're close enough to see what happens but far enough outside that world to occasionally notice things differently.
Why Do We Talk So Much About Leadership and So Little About Good Followership?
Leadership is everywhere. There are leadership books, leadership courses, leadership conferences, leadership coaches and thousands of articles explaining how to become a better leader. We discuss how leaders should communicate, motivate, inspire, delegate and build high-performing teams. All of that is important, but it raises a question that seems almost too obvious: What about the people being led?
Even the word follower has a problem. Tell somebody they're a great leader and they'll probably take it as a compliment. Tell that same person they're a great follower and somehow it doesn't carry the same status. Perhaps that's because we've come to associate following with obedience. We picture somebody who does whatever the boss says, keeps their head down, agrees with everything and perhaps spends more time thinking about their next promotion than thinking about whether the boss is actually right. We've probably all encountered people like that during our working lives, but that isn't what I would call good followership. In fact, surrounding a leader with people who constantly agree can become dangerous because eventually that leader may stop hearing the things they actually need to hear.
What Makes a Good Follower?
For me, a good follower needs quite a bit of courage. They should be capable of saying to the person above them, respectfully but clearly, “I don't think you're right.” They should be willing to bring another idea to the table, ask uncomfortable questions, notice something the leader has missed and sometimes say something that the person signing their paycheck doesn't particularly want to hear. That doesn't necessarily make somebody disloyal. Sometimes I think it demonstrates a much deeper form of loyalty.
If I were running a company, I wouldn't want ten people sitting around a table agreeing with me simply because I happened to be the boss. I'd want people who cared enough about the business, the customers and the outcome to tell me when they genuinely believed I was making a mistake. At the same time, challenging everything simply for the sake of challenging it isn't good followership either. There has to be judgment involved: knowing when to speak, how to speak, when to stand your ground and, after everybody has been heard and a legitimate decision has been made, knowing when it is time to support that decision and help make it work.
That distinction is important. Good followership is not blind obedience. It is not agreeing with the leader to keep yourself in favour. It is not avoiding responsibility by saying, “I was only doing what I was told.” A strong follower continues to think independently while contributing to a shared objective.
Good Followership Can Also Mean Leadership
Thinking about this took me much further back in my own life, to my time in the military and later in the Belgian Gendarmerie. Hierarchy was obviously much more visible there than it is in most businesses. You could have an officer with a very capable non-commissioned officer beneath them. In relation to the officer, that person was a follower. They received direction and were part of a chain of command. But turn around and look in the other direction and the picture changes completely. There were people underneath that same non-commissioned officer who depended on their judgment, decisions and leadership.
So what exactly was that person, a leader or a follower?
The answer is both.
They could be following in one direction while leading in another. That experience taught me something I think is equally relevant in business: leadership and good followership aren't necessarily opposites. Sometimes they exist in the same person at exactly the same time.
Good Followership in a Small Business
You don't need an army, a police force or a multinational corporation to see this principle at work. Take something as ordinary as running a shop. Let's say I own an antique business. I've spent years building it, I understand my customers, I know the products and I've developed a way of doing things that works very well. Then I employ somebody. Naturally, I can teach that person how I want things done and explain what has made the business successful, but I can't stand beside them every minute of every day.
Eventually, I have to walk out the door.
Now imagine a customer comes in with a problem. Something unexpected happens. A decision needs to be made that we never discussed and isn't written in some procedure. What do I want that employee to do? Stand there waiting for me? Telephone me for every little decision? Or do I want somebody who understands what we're trying to achieve well enough to think for themselves?
For me, that's where good followership becomes self-leadership. The employee is still following the overall direction and philosophy I've created for the business, but at exactly the same time I need them to exercise judgment, take responsibility and make sensible decisions without somebody standing over their shoulder.
If they get something wrong, I want them to be able to say so. If they see a better way of doing something, I want them to tell me. If they believe I'm about to make a poor decision, I'd rather hear their concern than discover afterwards that everybody knew it was a bad idea but nobody dared to say anything. And when I'm away from the business, I want to know that the person I've entrusted it to cares about what happens next.
To me, that isn't merely following instructions.
It is ownership.
Leadership and Followership Share More Than We Think
Perhaps this is where the traditional division between leadership and followership starts to break down. A good follower doesn't leave their brain at the door when they arrive at work. They think, take responsibility, question when necessary, make decisions, admit mistakes and recognise when somebody else knows more than they do. Sometimes they need to step forward and sometimes they need to step back.
Interestingly, many of the qualities we constantly associate with good leadership are also qualities required for effective followership: judgment, courage, integrity, communication, accountability, initiative, trust and humility. Those qualities don't suddenly disappear because somebody isn't sitting in the biggest office. What changes is the situation in which those qualities are being used.
Throughout a career, most of us will probably be leaders and followers many times over. A manager may lead their team while following the direction of an executive above them. A CEO may lead an entire organisation while remaining accountable to a board. An employee who normally follows may suddenly become the person everyone needs to listen to because, on a particular problem, they have the greatest expertise.
Sometimes one of the most intelligent things a senior leader can do is recognise that somebody else knows more about a particular subject and effectively say, “You lead this one. I'll follow.”
That isn't weakness. It requires confidence and humility because it means putting the outcome ahead of position or ego.
Good Followership Does Not Mean a Lack of Ambition
There is another part of this discussion that I think deserves much more attention. Not everybody wants to become the boss, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. There are exceptionally talented salespeople, technicians, engineers, researchers, craftspeople, nurses, programmers and specialists who want to become outstanding at what they do without necessarily wanting fifty people reporting to them.
Somehow, however, we've created career structures where moving upward often means eventually managing other people. We can almost make somebody feel that if they don't want to become a leader, they aren't sufficiently ambitious.
I don't believe that.
Mastery can be ambition. Becoming extraordinarily good at something can be ambition. Becoming the person other people trust because of your knowledge, judgment and reliability can be ambition. A successful organisation surely needs those people every bit as much as it needs the person sitting at the top.
Why Good Followership Matters
That brings me back to Terrie's simple observation: “A good follower is as important as a good leader.”
The more I think about those words now, the more meaning I find in them. Perhaps good leadership and good followership aren't opposite ends of a hierarchy at all. Perhaps they are two abilities that strong people learn to move between throughout their careers.
Knowing when to lead, when to follow, when to question, when to support, when to step forward and when to step aside may ultimately be more valuable than simply having the word leader printed underneath your name.
And perhaps organisations have been concentrating so heavily on developing the next generation of leaders that we've neglected an equally important question:
Are we also developing the next generation of good followers?
I'd genuinely like to hear what others think.
If you were running a business, would you rather have somebody working with you who always agreed with you, or somebody who occasionally challenged you, but whom you could completely trust when you walked out the door?
Comments