Following Well

The Milgram Experiment - Thomas Blass

2009-08-23T05:03:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T16:19:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T15:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T14:56:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Follow the Leader - Robert A. Sevier

2009-08-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

This outstanding 1999 article (White Paper - Stamats Communications, Inc.) is worth reading just for the opening story. A university president resigned and the consensus in the all campus meeting the next day was that what the campus needed was leadership. After much conversation, the current faculty president exploded, "Leadership? You don't want leadership. None of you want to work with a leader. You don't care about anything but yourselves. No leader in their right mind would come to this campus. You assassinate your leaders. You sue them. You stall and pretend you're discussing. You are not really interested in leadership because none of you are interested in following." When the president was done, he walked out of the room. The response was quick, "What does he know? He's no leader."

What a beautiful illustration of the problem! And what a beautiful illustration of what takes place in churches especially! I have a hard time imagining any pastor who wouldn't chuckle bitterly at their own experience of this story. This is the constant struggle organizations face. Our culture has raised both hero worship and hero assassination to an artform! While we have built an entire cottage industry around leadership development (and destruction) - it never seems to occur to us that perhaps followers have some responsibilities to consider also.

After another great story of "reluctant followers," Dr. Sevier posits another followership continuum based perspective on followership. While Sevier's descriptions of followers are often darker, interestingly, he begins his continuum with the best followers first...

1. Exceptional followers
2. Active-passive followers
3. Alienated followers
4. Reluctant-resistive followers
5. Saboteurs

I like this continuum. I especially like the fact that it is very hard on followers, openly admitting some of them are flagrantly destructive in the organization.

Sevier also echoes concerns that "it is dangerous to think of leaders and followers as separate entities." We must instead focus on the interaction, somewhat analogous to a marriage relationship.

In working with college leaders, several qualities and characteristics of exceptional followers emerge:

1. High self-esteem
2. Intelligence
3. Enthusiasm
4. Strong communication skills
5. Initiative
6. Energy
7. Courage
8. Political astuteness

It is also interesting to note the two qualities most often listed by leaders: cooperation and loyalty.

An interesting observation made by Sevier was that none of the executives he worked with even mentioned technical skills as effective follower characteristics. Leaders did not value acquired skills nearly as much as personal qualities.

Leaders spoke of four follower responsibilities:

1. Support the leader's decisions
2. Challenge the leader
3. Encourage the leader
4. Defend the leader

Sevier suggests nine ways for leaders to cultivate exceptional followers:

1. Identify people in the organization who have demonstrated skills and work to increase the variety and complexity of assignments they receive.
2. Never undermine their authority.
3. Acknowledge their value both publicly and privately.
4. Share the credit.
5. Mentor followers who hope to assume larger leadership roles.
6. Encourage and enhance dialogue
7. Heighten their sense of accountability for the decisions they make.
8. Keep their confidences
9. Empower them.

Sevier quotes Robert Kriegel, writing in Sacred Cows Make The Best Burgers, who asked followers what inspires them at work. They responded with the following five comments:

1. To be part of something great
2. To do something I have never done before
3. To do something I didn't think I could
4. To do something meaningful for people, the community, the world, the environment
5. To learn something new and interesting.

This was a very useful article.

The Changing Leader-Follower Relationships of the 1980's - Ronald Lippitt

2009-08-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Although now dated, this 1982 article from the Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences is still very relevant to the leader/follower conversation. Frankly, twenty-seven years later, Lippett's comments sound fairly prophetic. Lippett argued several cultural challenges to leader/follower dynamics:

1. The double bind of maintaining quality with reduced resources
2. Expectations of shared power and responsibility
3. Interdependence, collaboration and communication
4. More people required for problem solving
5. Integrating technological and human resources
6. Reorientation, renewal, and new competency development

He then stipulates both leader and follower specific challenges. I won't bother giving time to the leader challenges, but the follower challenges are still valuable.

1. A proactive versus a reactive membership stance.
2. Rehearsal and membership skill development. (Prepare well before speaking to your boss!)
3. Reversing sibling rivalry. Kenneth Benne has said we only imported two-thirds of the French Revolution. We brought over liberty, egality, but not fraternity! We must end the silo stuff!
4. Balancing self-satisfaction and contribution to others
5. Avoiding role-boundedness. This one seems particularly important in my mind. One great hurdle which simply must be overcome is the "not my job" mentality among followers. That one needs to die a quick and painful death! Job descriptions are important, but the mission must always be more important.

Leading & Following Volunteers: Implications for a Changing Society - Jone L. Pearce

2009-08-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

This 1982 article in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science is very interesting. Among other things, it removes us from the "carrot and stick" context of paid employment. This is particularly important to consider since the majority of leaders and followers in church contexts are volunteers. But this study isn't much help. The study examines performance variability, comparative influence, comparative dependence. They conclude these dependence factors especially have significant implications for contemporary organizational life. While employees will enjoy their increasing independence, leaders will find this same independence very demanding. They also argue volunteers and increasing independence will make societal life less predictable - without the controls of employment, consistency suffers.

Yeah, tell me something I don't know.

The Followership Continuum: A Model For Fine Tuning The Workforce - Patsy Blackshear

2009-08-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

This 2003 article from The Public Manager is another continuum based perspective on leadership and followership. Blackshear argues for a five stage continuum:

1. Employee (Is this person even a follower? Rost would say no.)
2. Committed Follower
3. Engaged Follower
4. Effective Follower
5. Exemplary Follower

She also suggests most organizations settle for a conventional bell-curve of people along this continuum with the majority of people falling squarely in the engaged follower spot. She argues that working to place people in their "best job" situations will result in the most exemplary followers in the organization.

I'll admit to being somewhat confused about her "best/worst" job definitions. It sounds like she is arguing for some sort of shallow situational focus for followership development. Work on changing the situation and you'll change your followers. I disagree. While this approach will certainly help somewhat, I'm more interested in producing followers who are effective and exemplary in whatever situation. Situations will always come and go; there are only so many situational variables that are even within our control. If we hold good followership hostage to gaining total control of the organizational context, we will never see good followership. But if we develop followers able to thrive in any context, we will have truly done something.

I think back to the story I heard last week at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. There comes a time when both leaders and followers must be able to look at the situation and honestly say, "TBU: True But Useless." There might be an awful lot of bad stuff going on around us in need of fixing, but where are the handles of good stuff we can grab onto? Don't just talk to me about situational problems! Talk about the practical baby steps within our control. Honestly assess and understand the bad and good aspects of the situation and then be able to make lemonade out of the lemons we're dealing with. We will never be able to make the situation good enough, so let's concentrate on developing people able to cope with any situation.

But then again, maybe I'm wrong about Blackshear's argument...in which case, never mind!

Dynamic Followership: The Prerequisite for Effective Leadership - Latour and Rast

2009-08-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Here is yet another military driven perspective on followership. Rather than encouraging leaders to mentor followers to "follow me" as imitation learning imperative, leaders may mentor to specific and objective abilities/traits to creat dynamic subordinates. These dynamic follower competencies form a foundation from which follower initiative can grow to leader initiative more naturally. The identified follower competencies help leaders focus their mentoring efforts. This approach encourages followers to develop fully, based on their personalities, strengths and weaknesses, and situational factors.

Latour and Rast highlight two ideal follower-competency dimensions: performance initiative and relationship initiative. Performance initiative includes the following:

1. Working effectively with others.
2. Embracing change
3. Doing the job (competence)
4. Seeing oneself as a resource

Relationship competencies include:

1. Building trust
2. Communicating courageously
3. Identifying with the leader
4. Adopting the leader's vision

Latour and Rast suggest another model of followership, citing work by Earl Potter, William Rosenbach and Thane Pittman, along these two continuums.

1. Subordinates (Low performing, low relating)
2. Politicians (Low performing, high relating)
3. Contributors (High performing, low relating)
4. Partners (High performing, high relating)

Finally, after considering several other studies, they suggest several follower competencies as a distillation of current followership research...

1. Displays loyalty
2. Functions well in a change-oriented environment
3. Functions well on teams
4. Thinks independently and critically
5. Considers integrity of paramount importance

Again, I find it striking that these competencies are not passive in the least. The only question I would have for Latour and Rast would be the ultimate direction and intention of their followership development efforts. Are we trying produce good followers or are we trying to produce good leaders? Isn't it okay to teach followership as followership? Are all followers on a growth path to leadership roles? I don't think so. Until followership is value in and of itself, we will not have accomplished what needs to be accomplished. The followers need to see the importance of what they are doing right now, not focus all their efforts on how what they are doing now might contribute to what they might get to do later. While that may well happen, that is largely irrelevant to followership study. It needs to be okay to be "just a follower."

But this was a very good summary article.

Fitting Teamwork Into the Grand Scheme of Things - Pat Townsend

2009-08-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

This author seeks to understand the dynamics of leadership and followership by placing both of them under the umbrella of "Teamship." He establishes four categories of people with the team; passive followers, active followers, small l leaders and capital L leaders. He sees the whole conversation as a continuum. The middle of the continuum is fluid, but not muddled. In a good team, it is often difficult to determine exactly who the leader is. Townsend also says everyone is, or can be, on several LTF continuums at once; we may serve in one place in one particular setting and entirely another somewhere else. Interestingly, he includes both the Leadership Principles from the US Marine Corps Guidebook and the Followership Principles from the United States Army, Infantry magazine. I won't include the Jarhead leader stuff, but the Army follower list sounds very much like the stuff USAF COL Meilinger was talking about in his article:

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement.
2. Be technically and tactically proficient.
3. Comply with orders and initiate appropriate actions in the absence of orders.
4. Develop a sense of responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.
5. Make sound and timely decisions or recommendations.
6. Set the example for others.
7. Be familiar with your leader and his/her job, and anticipate his requirements.
8. Keep your leaders informed.
9. Understand the task and ethically accomplish it.
10. Be a team member - but not a yes man.

You know, these Army guys really have something going if you ask me! Townsend suggests this list is a great framework for followership training. I agree. He suggests using it for self-assessment, development planning, mentoring, counseling and leadership studies.

While I don't embrace all the team work and continuum talk, I think the application of these basic followership principles are very valuable. Contrary to the perspective of some, this is not passive sheep and lemming followership. I challenge anyone to read this list and come away with the idea that the Army wants a bunch of sycophant, sissy followers.

The Importance of Followership - Lundin & Lancaster

2009-08-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

This article in The Futurist, published in 1990, was also instrumental in opening up followership dialogue. After making yet another strong argument for followership studies, they posit four characteristics of effective followers, based on their research.

1. Integrity - Followers are driven by their own beliefs

2. Owning The Territory - They understand the organization and acknowledge their own contribution.

3. Versatility - They are flexible and able to adapt. This is a particularly prophetic and enormous observation. Perhaps the biggest argument for followership studies is the increasing complexity of organizational life. It is becoming increasingly impossible for one leader to manage.

4. Self-Employed - They take responsibility for their own careers, their own actions, and their development.

Lancaster and Lundin also make some suggestions for nurturing followership:

1. Reconceptualize the workplace - Recognize self-management always outperforms coercion. Explore ways to enhance self-management.

2. Instituationalize followership - Empowered followers must be a part of business as usual. Build a valuation of followers into the structure of the organization.

3. Hire and train for followership - We are not simply looking for compliant people able to perform tasks. We are looking for motivated people desiring to own tasks.

Another excellent followership argument...

Ten Rules of Good Followership - Col Philip S. Meilinger

2009-08-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Much of followership research, interestingly, comes from within the military. This article begins with a very simple, relevant question: how does one become a good follower. Meilinger makes ten suggestions, many of which I'm certain Kellerman and others would take exception with.

1. Don't blame your boss for an unpopular decision or policy; your job is to support, not undermine. Whether you like the idea or not, do not undercut your boss.

2. Fight with your boss if necessary; but do it private, avoid embarrassing situations, and never reveal to others what was discussed.

3. Make the decision, then run it past the boss; use your initiative.

4. Accept responsibility whenever it is offered.

5. Tell the truth and don't quibble; your boss will be giving advice up the chain of command based on what you said.

6. Do your homework; give your boss all the information needed to make a decision; anticipate possible questions.

7. When making a recommendation, remember who will probably have to implement it. This means you must know your own limitations and weaknesses as well as your strengths.

8. Keep your boss informed of what's going on in the unit; people will be reluctant to tell him or her their problems and successes. You should do it for them, and assume someone else will tell the boss about yours.

9. If you see a problem, fix it. Don't worry about who would have gotten the blame or who now gets the praise. General George Marshall, Army chief of staff during WWII, once make the comment that there was not limit to the amount of good people could accomplish, as long as they didn't care who received the credit.

10. Put in more than an honest day's work, but don't ever forget the needs of your family. If they are unhappy, you will be too, and your job performance will suffer accordingly.

I know my military biases are showing, but I think these are excellent bits of advice. While there are caveats accompanying each of them, this is good no-nonsense followership talk.

10.

Meilinger, Philip S. The Ten Rules of Good Folllowership, Concepts for Air Force Leadership AU-24, p99.

Courageous Followers, Servant-Leaders and Organizational Tranformers - Linda Hopper

2009-08-12T13:54:00.001-07:00

This is an outstanding article! Hopper is the Director of Office of Training and Development for Georgetown University. She discusses their implementation of Ira Chaleff's Courageous Follower course in their Leadership Training Program. She is very intentional about integrating Greenleaf's Servant Leadership ideas into her conversation. Her thoughts are excellent and practical.

But probably the most interesting aspect of her article was her lengthy description of "The Problem with Ernie." She tells a story of an intentional follower who eventually had such difficulties with his manager he sent a letter bomb to the manager's home, seriously injuring the manager's daughter. Hopper's haunting experience with Ernie serves as a good reminder of the stakes involved in our conversations.

Hopper also makes an interesting reference to Jesus at the close of her article. She says, "Followership...is the foundation of all partnerships. When Jesus of Galilee said, "Come, follow me," He did not seek blind obeisance, sycophants, or toadies. He knew that His path would be treacherous, and that making the decision to follow required personal discernment and commitment to God. Follow me. In two words we can extend an invitation to participate, collaborate, grow, and achieve. In two words, we can offer ourselves as servant leaders worthy of support and commitment."

I agree.

Leadership For the Twenty First Century - Joseph Rost

2009-07-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-31T10:09:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-31T09:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

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.