The Milgram Experiment - Thomas Blass

Stanley Milgram has a great deal to teach us about followership and obedience. Thomas Blass, in an excellent article for The Art of Followership compendium, does a wonderful job summarizing how Milgram's relatively terrifying obedience experiments might comment/contribute to followership studies.

Milgram's studies, for those unfamiliar with them, tested the strange willingness most of us have to obey authority figures, even when the consequences of such obedience are immoral, unethical or destructive. A depressingly high number of test subjects revealed a willingness to obey orders, even when doing so might potentially risk the life of an innocent person. Having been tested and retested for decades, even across national borders, these tests have become a defining concern of many disciplines - psychology, sociology, anthropology, political scientists; there are all sorts of people still talking about the Milgram enigma.

Why would followers so regularly be willing to behave this way?

Blass makes an excellent application of Milgram's work to the followership conversation. One comment I found particularly interesting was the response of the U.S. Army to Milgram's work. Contrary to popular opinion, the Army has gone to great lengths to fight our tendency to foolishly obey, training officers in the early 1970's how to disobey illegitimate orders from superiors. Once again, it seems the military has something valuable to teach us.

It was also interesting to see the application being made in the legal world of Milgram's experiments. The argument is made that, given our propensity to obey authority figures, a person is not likely to question a request to search from police. Thus, care must be taken to ensure rights are protected.

I do question some of Blass' conclusions. For example, Blass argues Milgram does not tell us humans are by nature mean and nasty. While I understand and agree with part of Blass' argument, I do believe we would be wise not to underestimate our propensity for evil.

Blass also lists several important Milgram contributions to follower studies:

1. Destructive obedience is made possible when the authority's definition of reality is singularly accepted.
2. It happens when responsibility is shifted from follower to leader.
3. It happens when "counter-anthropomorphism" begins to occur. Using Milgram's term, destructive obedience occurs when people begin to ascribe human qualities to inanimate objects. The "experiment requires that we continue." Do this because "it is company policy." This is a particularly interesting application and, if I may say bluntly, very evident in the church. I've seen people behave terribly towards each other in the name of protecting policy or theology. LORD, save us from people who believe they alone are correct in every area of their theology! When we depersonalize people and personalize objects and ideas, we are moving into dangerous areas. I suspect this might be the most important application of Milgram's ideas.

Blass concludes that perhaps the best application of Milgram is for leaders to understand our natural propensity to obey and seek to channel those tendencies only for the good. Make leadership responsibilities an even more sacred trust...this is a very positive way of applying Milgram. A good encouragement.

This is a very good summary article and thought-provoking application of Milgram.

Follower First - Rusty Ricketson

Here is a collection of stuff written in the direction I wish to go. Rusty Ricketson has a lot to say to Christians and the church about followership. I have a collection of several articles I collected from his website.

Ricketson claims the "Bible is a book about followers, written by followers, for followers." His entire passion for followership seems to be driven by this belief. I too share this belief. I really like and agree with his thinking. This is a passion I very deeply share. His website has a copy of the first chapter of his book and a couple other papers. He has developed a biblical followership profile (which I must see!) and a "Following - Leading Philosophy of Leadership."

It is interesting that Ricketson seems as averse to word games as I am. Instead of leadership and followership, he prefers to keep things simple - leaders and followers, leading and following.

Ricketson argues most of the biblical material about followership can be broken into two major categories of concepts: a) relationship concepts and b) responsibility concepts. Each concept is further broken into sub-concepts and suggested survey questions.

As to relationship concepts, biblical followers seek to live in relationship with God. They are utterly abandoned to the leader and intimate with the leader.

As to responsibility concepts, biblical followers live responsibly toward their leaders. This means faithfulness and persistence.

Using questions driven by these concepts, Ricketson conducted a small survey. There were apparently some difficulties and it is obvious there is much work yet to be done. I particularly liked the first statement under the "limitation" paragraph. "The primary limitation of the development of the Biblical Followership Profile (BFP) is that the instrument was developed and pilot-tested by Baptists!" Speaking as a Baptist, I can profoundly affirm the weaknesses and limitations inherent there...

Another of the articles on Ricketson's website is an analysis/application of Chaleff's courageous follower stuff to the church context. Ricketson seems to agree that Chaleff's thinking provides a useful framework for biblical followership.

I will return to Ricketson I suspect. While there is much work yet to be done here, he is obviously a kindred soul.

Thanks Brother!

Courageous Followers, Courageous Leaders New Relationships for Learning and Performance - Chaleff

This 2001 article from Ideas For Leaders, available on the Executive Associates website, is an abbreviation of some of the issues of organizational transformation discussed in his book. Chaleff very constructively focuses on leader/follower relationships and what followers can do to make improvements on their side of the conversation. Chaleff comments: "At the heart of all transformation of relationships lies transformation of ourselves. This is where we have the most power to create change and the most reluctance to confront the need for it." Excellent!

Some of the key question points of reflection might include:

* Am I energetically pursuing the group's purpose?
* Do I need to take more initiative?
* What is my power based on in this situation that would enable me to take more initiative?
* Why am I hesitant to act?
* If courage necessary? If so, where can I find it?
* Have I earned the leader's trust so I have the platform from which to speak?
* Do I have the skills necessary for the confrontation without making the leader defensive?

Another nice, simple conversation piece for followers...

Followship: A 2008 White Paper - Hurwitz

This paper (available at www.flipskills.com) reviews and summarizes followership (I refuse to use his new word!) research, but for some reason, doesn't seem to want to deal much with Chaleff. Hm - interesting. Does he see Chaleff as a competitor?

Hurwitz wants us to use the word "followship" and adopt a new (already trademarked!) model of followership. This new model is based on two core competencies: personal manageability and leader support. Overall, I wasn't hugely impressed with the research. Frankly, this research seems more interested in developing something for use in a commercial consulting business than it does in advancing meaningful followership research.

As I have repeatedly mentioned in this blog, I see little value in simply muddying up terms and word play. For example, in the two tables outlining subskills for each of the trademarked follower skills, care is taken to distinguish between explicitly follower skills and leader skills. Who gets to make this distinction? And doesn't this fly in the face of most other contemporary followership research (Kelly, et al), which seems to imply great similarity between effective follower and leader skills? What is the importance of distinguishing these? This whole paper feels like a lot of "Who Moved My Cheese?" insights... I appreciate the work and the interest in followership conversation, but there isn't a lot I can use here as a followership practitioner and teacher.

There is a lot of good bibliographic information, however, so the paper is worth reviewing for that reason if no other.

Ethical Challenges In The Leader Follower Relationship - Hollander

This 1995Business Ethics article, from one of the leading writers in the area of followership, discusses the impact of ethical challenges on the leader follower relationship. Surveying the literature and contemporary ethical challenges such as enormous executive compensation at a time of massive layoffs and economic downturn, Hollander concludes "where the leader is seen to be power-oriented, exploitative, and self-serving, especially in the face of failures, the goal of mutual identification is hardly attainable. Instead, followers may feel alienated and ultimately take their allegiance elsewhere. That prospect poses an essential challenge today."

Almost fifteen years later, I would echo this concern. If anything, these words are even more true today. So what are followers to do? As courageous followers, how do we meaningfully address the issue of bloated executive compensation? Hollander mentions several flagrant cases, still evident in today's corporate world today. What is a follower to do about such situations? Do we simply refuse to work in a company with this sort of inequity or do we need a radical reorientation of our thinking on the ethics of compensation issues? Is there some way in which these inequities are ethical?

Some interesting questions.

Surviving The Leadership Of Others - Martinette

Wow! The opening illustration of this 2004 article (also published in Fire Engineering) is brutal. Some leaders are compared to snapping turtles snapping up innocent baby ducklings in the pond every spring. They continue to do this until everyone learns to behave like snapping turtles in order to survive!

This article discusses what to do when you end up working for a snapping turtle leader. What do we do when we end up working for someone who does not share our values and concerns? Martinette discusses several related issues.

1. Change your perspective on the situation. Stop whining and consider the situation a teaching opportunity.
2. Happiness. Understand it is not your boss's job to make you happy in life. Don't focus on your unhappiness; focus on understanding and changing the unhappy situation.
3. Their right to be as they wish to be. Regardless of how noxious we may find their behavior, we have no right to determine it. We can't control other people.
4. Don't expect others to change. Don't waste a lot of energy trying to change a difficult boss. You may or may not be effective; and it isn't our responsibility.
5. Understand you first. Take a long look at yourself first. Perhaps your boss isn't the one who most needs to change.
6. Understand your boss. Take a long look at your boss - perhaps there are aspects to his/her background or character that might mitigate some of the difficult behavior.
7. Individual expectations. Take the opportunity to openly discuss expectations with your boss - both professional and personal.
8. Take advantage of style. As an Army major once told me on a mission in Honduras, "We must learn to become one with the bureaucracy, Grasshopper!" If a leader wants things a certain way and we are able to provide it (even if we hate doing so), why not play the game and see what happens? Speaking from my experience in Honduras, a few weeks a playing the leader's game ended up setting us free to work as we wished for the rest of our time in country.
9. Work to the middle of the two poles. If you're absolutely at opposite ends of the spectrum, at least look for ways to work toward the middle.
10. Get out of the pond and watch how the turtles operate. Step back and see how others interact.
11. Focus on something other than work. Sadly, sometimes we must learn to find our satisfaction elsewhere. While not withdrawing at work, intentionally stepping away emotionally can be valuable.
12. Resist the urge to fall on the sword. This will probably accomplish nothing and demonstrate nothing to other followers watching you.
13. Seek professional help. Make sure the problem isn't with you.
14. Move to another pond.
15. Don't burn your bridges. Even if you decide to move on, don't take advantage of the situation by burning your bridges. This is never productive in the long run.

Some helpful advice for gruesome follower situations. However, I will say that Ira Chaleff's advice on these issues is much more valuable.

Can There Be Leadership Without Followership? - Eddie Buchanan

This is an interesting little article published a couple years ago in Fire Engineering of all things. Mostly, the article is a summary and application of Kelley's followership styles stuff.

But there are some interesting comments in the article. While discussing the issue of loyalty, Buchanan makes the comment "you don't have to be to loyal to the leader. Be loyal to your department, your organization, the job, and the citizens. If the leader is mission-oriented and doing the right thing, that's a bonus. Over the span of your time in the fire service, you may encounter leaders who want personal loyalty. Usually, these individuals eventually start to believe their own line of baloney. If you give them enough time, they'll go away. Be loyal to the patch; that's what really matters. Do a good job because the citizens and your brothers and sisters deserve it. The rest will take care of itself."

Really? Loyalty should never be personal? I'm not so sure about that - while personal loyalty is always much more difficult, I question whether or not we should intentionally shy away from it as this writer implies.

The other comments I found noteworthy came at the end of the article. The writer advises us to be careful about pigeonholing people (according to Kelley's categories or anyone else's). We may be incorrect about who we're dealing with. Making assumptions about followers could be very counterproductive. We must not attempt to read each other's mind on these things. Clear and open communication is key.

Can We Lead And Follow? - Gene Dixon

Dixon continues to see followership as a developmental, intermediary stage on the path to leadership. Combining visionary leadership theory and Chaleff's courageous follower theory, this article reemphasizes the importance of followers and follower behavior studies in leadership development.

I have contacted Dr. Dixon about the possibility of seeing his test instruments. Perhaps I will have a better understanding of his work then.

Followers Revealed - Gene Dixon

Gene Dixon, of East Carolina University Engineering, Inc., has written many articles on followership. They have principally been published in engineering journals and reflect an engineer's sensibilities, but offer lots of good insights and study nonetheless.

I was able to obtain copies of two Dixon's articles, one from 2003 and one from March of this year. The first article summarizes followership background issues and singles out Ira Chaleff's work as a testable model. He developed The Followership Profile (TFP), a self-assessment survey using the five courageous follower behaviors identified by Chaleff. After all the mathspeak, Dixon's conclusions are these:

1. Follower behaviors are measurable. I would question any conclusion like this as long as what is being measured is self-reported. I would also like to see his survey instrument before trusting this conclusion.
2. Courageous followers exist within organizations.
3. Followership is discernable at all levels of the organization. It isn't just the peons at the bottom of the heap who exhibit follower behaviors.
4. Attributions of followership are influence by organizational level. Interesting here is that the best understanding of followership exists not among the followers, but among the executives.
5. Followership Increases with level of hierarchy. Organizational leaders are good followers.

Dixon offers a new organizational construct at the close of this article. Rejecting an org chart where everyone is a leader and rejecting a traditional hierarchical leader and followers chart, Dixon suggests a chart where everyone is both. To be honest, I don't know how meaningful that is. We are all everything all at once? Nope; not me, sometimes I serve in leader roles and sometimes I serve in follower roles. Once again, we're back to Joseph Rost's argument. If we mess with the language long enough, nobody understands what in the world we're talking about.

While I would question some conclusions (and perhaps don't completely understand all of them), it is interesting to hear someone argue mathematically that executives are better followers than most people we would traditionally label as follower roles. Perhaps it would do us good as followers to regularly ask ourselves how our leaders ended up leadership. Perhaps we might find our leaders have something to teach us after all!

In any event, all questions and disagreements aside, I'm glad to see someone attempting to do serious followership study. If I were a smarter person, I would probably appreciate it even more.

Workplace Dictatorships - Zogby Poll

I came across a Zogby Poll from last summer saying 1 in 4 Americans describe their employer as a "dictatorship." Thirty-four percent of bosses in the American workplace react well to valid criticism (Would someone define that for me please??). The survey also found that less than half of working Americans - 46% - said their workplace promotes creative or inventive ideas, while barely half - 51% - said their co-workers often feel motivated or are mostly motivated at work. The study concluded that "traditionally managed companies...are stifling productivity, innovation, and creativity. Companies cannot expect to remain competitive when such large numbers of employees do not feel like they are treated like responsible adults nor when they feel like their input has little or no impact on the company's decision-making process."

Hmm... This is a self-reported employee survey. I would really love to hear the leader's side of these questions. While I would echo the encouragements and challenges to leaders of studies like this, I would also like to ask why leaders apparently treat their employees in these ways. If it is so obviously bad for business, doesn't it stand to reason leaders wouldn't want to be this way? What leader doesn't enjoy working with motivated followers? Using Dr. Robert Sevier's continuum of followership, I would really like to hear what the leaders of all these disgruntled followers have to say about their behavior. I deeply suspect followers are more to blame for these workplace "dictatorships" than anyone cares to admit.

We followers must develop the courage to better manage our leaders or we will have no one but ourselves to blame for our workplace misery. As always, we usually get the leaders we deserve.