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...]

Authentic Leadership - A Thesis by Mark Pochardt

Skimming a recently published Bethel University thesis on "Authentic Leadership and Followership: Bridging the Gap Between Self and Others" by Mark K. Pochardt, I find myself wondering about the place of authenticity in the leadership and followership conversation.

I find the whole conversation somewhat puzzling. When exactly am I ever not authentic? As the biblical author James says plainly, "You say you believe, I'll show you my beliefs by how I behave." When I behave in opposition to something I say I believe, am I violating my authenticity or am I simply demonstrating to the world I don't actually believe what I say I do? What comes first - behavior or belief?

It seems to me the entire question and pursuit of authenticity in any area of experience dangerously assumes the authentic me is always worth pursuing. Sometimes the authentic me is well worth rejecting. An ISO 9000 rating is only valuable to the degree the quality standards are good.

I'm trying to change the authentic me into something authentically worthy. I'm doing this because sometimes I'm authentically pretty awful. I wish I wasn't that way, I wish I could blame my junk on some discombobulated paradigm, but I know I can be a terrible jerk sometimes.

I yelled at a guy in the gym this morning for making the rest of us listen to his nasty, profane and unduly loud mouth. There was probably a more pastoral, seeker sensitive, Christian way of handling that conflict I suppose, but I felt a strong need to be loudly authentic with the man. Then again, as God is my witness (which of course He is!), I must also admit that what I really wanted to do was grab the guy off his treadmill and reduce his nose to mush. My wife was right there listening to this guy's nastiness. I really don't like men behaving badly around people I love. So was I being inauthentic by curbing my violence? Who the heck am I really? What does it say about me as a deeply committed Christian and a pastor that I would harbor such awful, violent thoughts or engage in such loud conflict from time to time? I do believe these urges and thoughts are not Christian and they certainly aren't good or constructive. So who is the real me? I suspect my wife could tell you all too well.

There's an old story of a man doing a public opinion survey among Amish farmers. Eventually, the researcher got to a question about religious preference. He asked the farmer if he was a Christian, to which the wise farmer replied, "I don't know, you'll have to ask my neighbors."

That's a guy who knows something about authenticity.

Servant Leadership - Robert Greenleaf

This is considered the seminal work in the fast-growing, and very important field of servant leadership research. Driven by Herman Hesse's Journey To The East story of a leader humbly serving his followers, Greenleaf rambles through twenty years of often stream of consciousness, but always important thoughts on what it means to truly be a servant leader in several important cultural contexts. Basically, everything in this study boils down to Greenleaf's passionate conviction that every great leader must first be and truly always be seen as servant first.

To put it mildly, there is strong, substantive and valuable stuff here that builds a firm foundation for servant leadership and, secondarily, followership research.

While talking to and about leaders, Greenleaf implicitly recognizes the intrinsic value of followers and the necessary service attitude of leaders toward followers. A servant leader must be servant of followers first. From the rave reviews of virtually all important leadership students, scholars and practitioners in all directions and at all levels and, from the now extensive research done in the SL area, it is obvious Greenleaf's work resonates loudly throughout the world.

So why do I find it so yawning, rambling and tedious? Why was it so hard to read?

It isn't because I disagree with scarcely a word Greenleaf offers. His ideas are critically important and ideas I strongly embrace as a follower trying hard to be a good and godly servant leader of the followers I serve. Given what I'm about to say, it is thoroughly ironic how desperately I long to be almost exactly what Greenleaf is trying so hard to encourage leaders like me to become...

My yawning at this book is categorically not because his ideas aren't important. Frankly, any voice able to stand and be heard against the overwhelming, ocean tide of writers offering more selfish perspectives on leadership is worth applauding and loudly promoting. These ideas are critically important. I wouldn't want to do anything to minimize them.

And it isn't because these ideas are necessarily boring or badly shared. Although the book isn't as linear, organized or laced with relevant application as I would normally find helpful, it isn't awfully done either. To even suggest such in the minds of some servant leadership fanatics would be the height of blasphemy! And I certainly wouldn't want to be considered a blasphemer...no sir, not me!

I guess the reason I yawned through most of this book is principally because these ideas are so utterly not original or innovative, not even in their first public presentations by Greenleaf back in 1977. More specifically to my point, Greenleaf's servant leadership conversation does not sufficiently get down to the critically core perspectives of the original servant leadership theorist, Jesus of Nazareth.

Even the chapter discussing servant leadership in the church is not helpfully driven by the most important Servant Leader of all. Frankly, I suspect Jesus of Nazareth would have found Greenleaf's definition of the church as "the institutionalization of humankind's religious concern" to be a woefully inadequate, theologically sad and thoroughly nauseating description of the spiritually powerful, gate-smashing body of believers for whom He left His home in heaven, sacrificed His life and was resurrected as the victorious conqueror of death and hell! Greenleaf's entire servant leadership church conversation revolves around the dusty, outward, institutional structures of the church and largely ignores the living, powerful, spiritual, utterly mysterious, inexplicable and wildly messy and miraculous body of Jesus followers. While again, I find nothing overtly objectionable in Greenleaf's servant leadership theorems and applications, and much that is good, solid and important criticism to be properly and respectfully received, I must admit to boredom with the superficiality and Jesus ignorance of most of it.

Greenleaf is categorically not the foundational servant leader energizing my passion and perspective on leadership and followership. I will interact with him as a seminal, valuable and well-recognized contributor to the servant leadership stream of conversation, but foundational he is certainly not. Others may well reject my minimization of Greenleaf, and still others may denigrate my silly, unscholarly passion for Jesus Christ as servant leader and first follower, but these will always, quite unapologetically remain the perspectives driving my research.

I do enormously value Greenleaf (as I value Kelley, Chaleff, Kellerman and so many other intelligent, hard-working, fellow-traveling and academically passionate friends), but Jesus of Nazareth (and what I know and learn of Him in the Bible and elsewhere) must supremely drive my life, leadership and followership research. To stand or study otherwise would be, for me, a completely irrational standing on sand.

While this perspective may seem more spiritual than scholarly to some, it is from here where I must intellectually (and in all other ways) approach my life and research. To paraphrase a follower exalting, life embracing, beer swilling, sometimes flat out wrong and dear Katie hugging, rebelliously leading and Jesus following guy named Luther, "here I stand, I will go no further."

The Power of Followership - Robert Kelley

This is, of course, the seminal work on followership, built largely on controversial research first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1988. While others have touched on followership incidentally, Robert Kelley was the first to get research and an excellent book published exclusively on the issue. His work is still the foundation of most meaningful followership conversations today, although Kelley himself seems to have moved off into other, slightly different directions.

Kelley first establishes, in my view, the increasing impossibility of our obsession with leadership. With the sheer quantity of leadership advice available,with the world changing rapidly around us, it is ludicrous to believe our leader-centrism is sustainable. So Kelley makes a case for intentional followership. He gives reasons to choose followership. Interestingly, for this research, he uses Robert Greenleaf's Servant Leadership stuff as one foundation for his follower thinking. Kelley's chapter on "enoughness" is particularly thought-provoking in this regard.

Probably the most important and useful thing Kelley does is establish a Followership Styles questionnaire and evaluation mechanism. He then spends time discussing exemplary followership, a follower's web of relationships, courageous conscience (see Ira Chaleff for an expansion of this) and then, ironically, some leadership secrets from exemplary followers.

By his own admission, Kelley was not attempting to establish a comprehensive text on followership. He was simply trying to get people to consider the other side of our leadership obsessions. He did so beautifully. I find it fascinating (and very revealing!) that this great book is now already out of print.

The Courageous Follower - Ira Chaleff

This is the best book on followership ever written; even better than Robert Kelley's groundbreaking treatment! Aside from perhaps the Bible, this is the most thorough and helpful textbook on followership in print. While I'll admit the pickings are currently slim when it comes the subject of followership, it is easy to see why this book is now in its second edition. [Update: Just discovered The Courageous Follower is going into a 3rd Edition!] This was a real pleasure to read and easy to broadly apply.

Ira Chaleff focuses his entire perspective on followership around the theme of courage. This allows him to speak positively and constructively, even while dealing with painful issues of personal safety, conflict and admittedly evil leadership. Chaleff's perspective, at many points in the book, is simply inspirational. He not only helps the reader understand what good followership looks like, he makes followership feel like a pretty good choice. A real breath of fresh air...

The outline of Chaleff's work is simple, after a thorough discussion of leader and follower dynamics, he then breaks followership into five dimensions of courage (and a sixth dimension tossed in for the leaders just so they won't get pouty!). He believes these five (plus 1) dimensions are foundational to any discussion of good followership. Those dimensions are:

* The Courage to Assume Responsibility
* The Courage to Serve
* The Courage to Challenge
* The Courage to Participate in Transformation
* The Courage to Take Moral Action
* The Courage to Listen To Followers

Chaleff's discussion model of the leader/follower dynamic is also very simple. He argues leadership and followership are little more than people in different roles swimming around the same purpose or objective. Followers do not orbit around the leader! We orbit around our shared cause or purpose. This is a critically important distinction.

Chaleff also offers another four-quadrant model of followership style, describing four different types of followers. I don't find this particular model as helpful (and easy to use) as Kelley's model of follower styles. The categories of Kelley's model are clearer to distinguish and easier to explain.

In almost every area of the book, Chaleff includes bold faced lists of application comments, maxims or questions on the area under discussion. This saved me an awful lot of highlighter ink!

This is simply a super textbook on followership. There is something worthwhile on every single page.

Thanks Ira!

Followership - Barbara Kellerman

This is one of the "big three" books available on followership. But I found it a very difficult and largely unproductive read. Perhaps this is the reason I'm not finding Kellerman's name in much followership research. Kellerman seems almost more interested in attacking leadership than she is in promoting healthy followership. I haven't read her first book "Bad Leadership," but this book feels like it might be simply a continuation.

Good followership is not just whistle-blowing, "getting the man" and "speaking truth to power." That is certainly a sad component that needs to be included in any followership conversation, but not to the extent Kellerman does. As a follower regularly serving mostly in leadership roles for the last twenty years, I find this attitude frustrating and unhelpful. While it is true our culture is dangerously obsessed with leadership, it is also true that most leaders are not bad, hurtful or inordinately evil people. At least not any more evil than me! Frankly, in my current area of service, many leaders serve because others simply refuse to step forward. Leaders need us to serve them well, not pick them apart at every turn. In my opinion, we don't need more studies of bad leadership - we need research on positive, healthy and effective followership. Any idiot can identify the leadership failures, I want to discover the followership success stories.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must also confess I found Kellerman's entirely one sided political perspective tedious and trying. As a military veteran, her lengthy discussion of the Anaconda operation in Afghanistan was particularly painful to read. Any experienced military follower understands that every operational plan lasts only until the first round goes down range. Was the Anaconda battle poorly planned and executed? Probably. Did the military bravado leave the soldier's minds once the bullets began to fly? Duh! It always does! Did the political situation adversely impact the execution of the battle? Yeah, it always does. But was the (admittedly poor) decision to avoid using artillery made principally for good, humanitarian reasons (minimize civilian casualties)? Categorically! And if artillery would have been used heavily and many innocent civilians killed during the battle, would Kellerman and others have been stumbling all over themselves to be gracious and kind to the Bush administration for their blood-thirsty, "kill them all and let God sort 'em out" aggressiveness? I sincerely doubt it. And finally, if the terrible final score of a battle is 767 terrorists killed versus 8 of ours lost, does that honestly qualify as the sort of utter military, leadership and followership debacle Kellerman is attempting to say it is? I hardly think so. Frankly, if everything Kellerman says about the operational planning and leadership failures is true, then perhaps the Anaconda operation is a stunning example of follower success in spite of poor leadership. Why not emphasize the great ways the followers managed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat? At the end of the day, some military operations go beautifully and some go very badly. This one sounds like it went badly, at least at the leadership level. But if badly ends up looking this good, I'll take badly every time.

I appreciate Kellerman's passion for followership, I truly do. I just wish it were more constructive. I don't need any help being negative about leadership...I can do that all by myself.

Milgram Revisited

Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: July 1, 2008
New papers illustrate the continuing power of Stanley Milgram’s shock experiments — and the interpretations they still inspire.

Researcher Revives 'Shocking' Human Experiment

Researcher Revives 'Shocking' Human Experiment - ABC News

Dr. Ruston Ricketson on Following Me

http://foundationofthefaith.org/documents/FollowingLeader.wma

Ira Chaleff - Courageous Follower Presentation

http://www.execoach.com/qtmovie.htm

A Sermon on Followership - Dave Dooley

An Introduction to The Courageous Follower

Followership, Leadership and Music

Followership And Rwanda Genocide

Another interesting Harvard lecture on followership and the Rwanda geneocide. Fascinating conversation!

An Introduction to The Art of Followership

Perhaps the single most important book on followership research is this compendium of presentations made at the 2006 Revisiting Followership conference.

Barbara Kellerman on Followership

This is an excellent presentation and summary of the issues from one of the most important writers in the field.

Barbara Kellerman is a Harvard professor and the author of "Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders." While I'll confess her work feels a lot more combative at times than I find productive, she is doing some interesting study in the area of followership. This is an excellent conversation about the fundamental issues involved in followership studies.

If for whatever reason the embed doesn't work, here's the direct YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgLcAF5Lgq4

Followership - Michelle Brask

This is a very well done and thought-provoking thesis. Brask has really done some excellent homework on the followership conversation. I particularly enjoyed her almost humorous section on followership definitions. Along with her, I find it stunning that even Kelley and Chaleff did not bother giving followership definitions in their initial studies. Brask's quote of Chaleff saying, "That's a sand trap" when asked for a definition at the Rethinking Followership conference is a real chuckle. It seems obvious Brask must have either attended the conference or seen the videos. I'm truly jealous!

One remarkable aspect of Brask's research is the breadth of it. I've been studying these followership themes since 1991 and I'd never heard of Berlie J. Fallon's 1974 book. I managed to find a used copy and order it. Brask's serious treatment of even this book is both thought-provoking and noteworthy.

Another comment stream I found interesting was driven by Ronald Lippett's pregnant thought, "Sometimes it seems hard to diagnose whether computers are leaders or followers." Fascinating thought! What is the role of technology in the leader/follower struggle? Another bunny trail to follow...

Brask's analysis of Joseph Rost's change of heart about the word "followership" was also fascinating. Apparently, Rost now believes the word followership is outdated, a vestigial and negative concept that must be entirely disregarded. His followership views have not changed over the years, but the language he uses to describe them have. Rost argues we are all just doing different forms of leadership...we are all more properly called "collaborators" of one sort or another. I personally think that's garbage thinking and semantic navel-gazing. We don't throw out a useful term just because people have a poor view of it. We defend and explain the term so people properly (and hopefully more positively!) understand it. We don't like the term "follower" or "followership," so now we're supposed to muddy up the word "leadership." NO! This is positively Orwellian thinking, Mr. Rost!

There are several interesting discussions of continuums of leadership and followership. Patsy Blackshear and Pete Townsend both propose interesting ideas that Brask ably summarizes. Again we have some new words invented such as "teamship." Oh brother! But Blackshear's work may be interesting - she summarizes four different streams of followership research. She will be reappearing in this blog stream! Blackshear's follower continuum is very thought-provoking.

Brask also highlights Angela Thody's work to organize followership terminology. This also sounds very interesting, but I couldn't find an online copy of the article. Bummer!

The final area of study for Brask's thesis was a lengthy conversation about toxic leadership and followership. She highlights Kellerman's stuff extensively. This is also thought-provoking as, in my haste to exalt the follower, I quite easily forget that there are crappy followers just as there are crappy leaders! While we do need to pay more attention to followers and followership, we must not forget original sin.

I found a tiny, spell-checker driven spelling error on page 65, first sentence of the third paragraph. Other than an utter triviality like that, this was outstanding and thorough research. Excellent work, Ms. Brask! This was a very helpful summary.

The Tango of Lead and Follow - Ellen Thayer

In Ellen Thayer's thesis "Followership and the Dance of Lead and Follow," (Augsburg College, 2000) she establishes an Argentine tango metaphor for what is going on. On the first page of her thesis, she argues Robert Greenleaf was one of the first to understand to value of followers and quotes Warren Bennis emphasizing the increasing importance of followership studies as well. She has a lengthy discussion of both Kelley and Chaleff's followership work as well as comments from other leadership thinkers.

In her section on the cultural shift from an industrial to post-industrial world view (pp 19-20), she provokes me to wonder what relevance Thomas Friedman's"The World Is Flat" arguments might have for followship research and conversation. In an increasingly flat world in which we are all competing against everyone else, could it be that these flattening forces could be exponentially amping up the importance of good followership? In a hyper-competitive world, even the best leaders will not survive without fully engaged, effective followers. Return to this theme later...

Her conversation about power (pp 21-23) is also thought-provoking. Similar to the cultural shift above, isn't it logical that the centers of power are also flattening? As leaders come to depend more and more on followers, power is inevitably pushed downward.

She finishes her thesis with a very lengthy (pp 25-31!) explanation/application of a tango metaphor for the leader/follower dynamic. While I like the artistic and musical way of describing things, I'll confess I'm far less interested in dancing than Thayer. The other problem I have with the metaphor is Thayer's very emotional use of it. While I enjoy artistic, musical and emotional things more than most folks, I think we want to tread very lightly with emotions in this conversation. The importance of followership has little or nothing to do with emotion - it is simply good business practice. While there are emotional elements to all things, it is not the emotional aspects of this conversation that sell. Followership theory must not and will not stand on a profoundly emotional foundation. We aren't trying to be mushy and cuddly - we're trying to get work done. But then, as an overly emotional person myself, perhaps I'm overreacting to what Thayer is saying. See? Emotion scary and unhelpful!

This is obviously a student effort, but still a good summary of many of the issues involved in the conversation. Thanks Ellen!

Outliers - The Story of Success

Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell is right. Perhaps success isn't something we achieve through exclusively through hard work, leadership training, innate skills, traits and abilities. Perhaps success is a simple combination of all the right factors coming together at all the right times.

What does this imply for leadership and followership conversations?

Outliers are those who have been given opportunities – and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them. For hockey and soccer players born in January, it’s a better shot at making the all-star team. For the Beatles, it was Hamburg. For Bill Gates, the lucky break was being born at the right time and getting the gift of a computer terminal in junior high. Joe Flom and the founders of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz got multiple breaks. They were born at the right time with the right parents and the right ethnicity, which allowed them to practice takeover law for twenty years before the rest of the legal world caught on.

Hm...do we find ourselves in successful, powerful leadership roles because of hard work, dedication, skill sets and qualifications or is it perhaps due to more primal, circumstantial details? And do many of us "end up" as followers not because of any lack of skill or qualification, but simply because all the circumstantial "stars" just didn't line up? How should Gladwell's conversation affect follower thinking?

This should be a thought-provoking read, as are all Gladwell's thoughts.

Shop Class As Soulcraft

Just heard a fascinating interview on Bill Bennett's show with the author of the book "Shop Class As Soulcraft." It strikes me there is a profound relationship between any conversation about followership and our nation's devaluing perspective on "shop class" vocations. Perhaps the disappearance of shop classes from the public school system is the best indicator of this country's devaluation of typically follower-filled vocational roles. It only makes sense. We all know the silly logic. Vo-Tech stuff is just for losers and those who can't get into good colleges. We're all praying, pushing and training our kids to become leaders and celebrities; why not just leave shop classes for the dumb kids. Right? Who needs shop class? Shop class is only for followers!

I haven't read the book yet, but I suspect I now know at least one author who would reject that utterly idiotic, myopic thinking. Even verbally playing around with such shallow, stupid logic makes me cringe...it makes me downright angry.

My father has been a shop class guy his whole vocational life. My father wanted a turning lathe, so he built himself one. My depression baby, greatest generation father has never seen an old refrigerator motor he considered worthy of throwing away! My parents home is filled with the fruit of my father's intelligence and hard work. My shop class father is so precious to me I can scarcely think of him without getting emotional. In many ways, my shop class dad is the inspiration for my passion for followership research and writing.

So don't be dissing shop class! Even though I have woefully never been much of a shop class guy, I ask us all to ponder who is more powerful - the person wealthy enough to own all the latest gadgets or the person who knows how to design, build and maintain them?

I have my answer.