Leadership For the Twenty First Century - Joseph Rost

Joseph Rost's study of leadership draws some interesting conclusions about followers. He is supremely interested in transitioning models of leadership to the new post-industrial age. Rost discusses leadership as a relationship, of which leaders and followers are simply two different, "yin and yang" components.

Rost argues there is no such thing as a passive follower (p108); that activity is required to be considered a follower at all. "Passive people are not in a relationship. They have chosen not to be involved. They cannot have influence. Passive people are not followers." That is interesting thinking. While they may physically appear to be followers, they may well not be. This is a good way of defining out of existence the idea that followers are passive sheep to be ordered docilely about.

Rost also says followers may fall anywhere on the continuum of organizational activity. They may be extremely involved or only minimally involved.

Thirdly, and this agrees completely with Robert Kelley's research, followership is just a role. These roles may be swapped at any given time and situation. Followership is a role, not a person.

But fourth, and here's where I must part ways, Rost says followers do not do followership, they do leadership. They are simply playing roles in the overall exercise of leadership. I understand what he saying and I appreciate his motivation for saying what he says, but I consider it "antics with semantics." Once again we're muddying the verbal waters simply because somebody is afraid to embrace the negative baggage coming with the word follower. Ridiculous! Why can't I happily do followership if I find myself in a follower role? Frankly, I find it more insulting to be completely consumed by the leadership mantra! No - we follower exalting folks have enough work to do already. Let's not make things more confusing than they have to be. In spite of Rost's well-intentioned scholarly arguments, "Follower" is not a word that is ever going away; so why not concentrate on helping people understand it properly?

[Update: Rost dealt with this last issue extensively in his presentation at the 2006 Reinventing Followership Conference. Now he is suggesting we call followers "collaborators." I strongly disagree. Collaborators?? What? Am I some sort of undercover operative or something? No; I agree with Robert Kelley - don't abandon a word simply because people don't fully understand or appreciate it. While there are occasions where it might be sadly necessary to do so, I don't believe this is one of them. I believe Kelley, Chaleff, Kellerman, Greenleaf and others have done sufficient work on the word so as to rescue it from the foolishness of our age. I don't want to give up on the clearest description of what most people are. If more of us stand up publicly and proudly for followers, following and followership, I believe people will let us keep it. We'll see I guess...]