Q #39: What is “followership”?

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.

Although Amazon offers more than 330,000 books in the general category of “leadership,” it offers only about 2,500 in the general category of “followership.” Warren Bennis has observed, “It is no surprise that books on leadership, promising to reveal the secrets of countless football coaches and historical figures as disparate as Moses and Attila the Hun, outnumber those on followership several thousand to one. After all, leadership is the prize that ambitious men and women have struggled and even died for at least since Alexander the Great…When followers check the power of their leaders, they clearly function as leaders themselves, albeit less well paid ones…If I had to reduce the responsibilities of a good follower to a single rule, it would be to speak truth to power.”

In an essay entitled “Courageous Followers, Servant-Leaders, and Organizational Transformations, ” Linda Hopper identifies five common barriers to engaging “disaffected, disgruntled, distrustful employees who appear reticent to make a commitment to and be accountable for work or decisions.” Courageous followership can help to lower these barriers by seeking ways to work for conjoint efforts toward common goals, seeing others as allies rather than as enemies or even as opponents, seeing their own success as the goals of the organization become a reality, and recognizing that their participation in successful change initiatives substantiates the belief that their efforts as well as collaborative efforts with others really can make a difference.

Edith Wharton once wrote, “There are two ways of spreading light – to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.’ By being worthy servant-leaders and courageous followers, we bring light into our organization.” My own opinion is that, sooner than we may now expect, the time will come when the terms “leader” and “follower” will be interchangeable because the most productive and most highly principled people will be both “candles” and “mirrors” when spreading the light that guides others.

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob