Introduction to Leadership Concepts.

INTRODUCTION

IN MANY ORGANIZATIONS, there has been a movement away from the

extremes of all-powerful leaders and powerless, submissive followers.

We hear about "shared leadership," a helpful concept in softening the rigid

demarcation lines often found between leaders and followers. But there is

a limit to the usefulness of this concept. Despite the fact that many peo­

ple experience visceral discomfort with the term follower, it is not realistic

to erase all distinctions between the roles of leaders and followers.

Instead, we need a dynamic model of followership that balances and

supports dynamic leadership . We need a model that helps us embrace rather

than reject the identity of follower because the model speaks to our

courage , power, integrity, responsibility, and sense of service . This book

proposes a proactive view of the follower's role , which brings it into parity

with the leader's role. Parity is approached when we recognize that lead­

ers rarely use their power wisely or effectively over long periods unless they

are supported by followers who have the stature to help them do so. Regret­

tably, recent history is strewn with examples that support this observation.

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3 THE COURAGEOUS FOLLOWER

In many situations, no matter how much partnership or empowerment

exists the leader has ultimate authority and responsibility. The CEO of

a business, the commander of a fleet, the head of a government agency,

the director of a nonprofit organization, the bishop of a diocese, all have

certain powers they retain for themselves and accountability that is not

transferrable. It is difficult to appreciate the external pressures on leaders until you

have walked in their shoes, until you have had to make payroll, bring a

squadron through safely, or respond to the outraged constituents who

elected you. The internal pressures on leaders are often equally potent.

"Ego strength," one of the qualities that propels an individual to leader­

ship, is reinforced in ways that can deform it into "ego driven." If these pressures aren't managed well, with adroit help from followers, they can

distort the leader's decision-making processes and interpersonal dynam­

ics. Usually, the distortion will be in the direction of more authoritarian

behavior and away from the partnering we desire. How does a follower effectively support a leader and relieve these pres­

sures? How does a follower become a "shaper" rather than simply an

"implementer"? How does a follower contribute to leadership development

rather than become a critic of leadership failings? As in all human endeavor, many of us do some of these things quite

naturally. But most of us can readily identify times we felt frustrated in our

"second fiddle" situation as we watched our leaders make a mess of things,

whether from the best of intentions or the worst. The increasingly egali­

tarian age we live in does not allow us to comfortably shirk responsibility

and say, "Well, she's the boss!" We've grown beyond authoritarian mod­

els that strip followers of accountability. But we haven't necessarily grown

fully comfortable with a new way of operating. Most of us are leaders in some situations and followers in others. On

one level we understand and fully accept this. You can't, by definition,

have a world of only leaders! To think of leaders without followers is like thinking of teachers without students. Both are impossible. They are two

sides of one process, two parts of a whole. Teachers and students form a

learning circle around a body of knowledge or skills; leaders and follow­

ers form an action circle around a common purpose.

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE /

But on another level there seems to exist the deepest discomfort with

the term follower. It conjures up images of docility, conformity, weakness, and failure to excel. Often, none of this is the least bit true. The sooner

we move beyond these images and get comfortable with the idea of pow­ erful followers supporting powerful leaders, the sooner we can fully develop and test models for dynamic, self-responsible, synergistic relationships in

our organizations.

If we are to attain the empowerment we crave, we must accept respon­ sibility for both our own roles and the roles of our leaders. Only by accept­

ing this dual responsibility do we ultimately accept responsibility for our

organizations and the people they serve. We need to understand three

things to fully assume this responsibility:

First, we must understand our own power and how to use it. As fol­

lowers, we have far more power than we usually acknowledge. We must

understand the sources of our power, whom we serve, and what tools we

have to carry forward the group's mission from our unique vantage point.

Second, we must appreciate the value of leaders and cherish the criti­

cal contributions they make to our endeavors. We must understand the

forces that chisel away at their creativity, good humor, and resolve. We

must learn how to minimize these forces and create a climate in which a

leader's strengths are magnified, so a leader can better serve the common

purpose.

Third, we must understand the seductiveness and pitfalls of the power

of leadership. We are all familiar with Lord Acton's quote: "Power tends to

corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We are all witnesses to

the many examples that support its assertion. Yet we are like the person

who has never taken hard drugs: though we can intellectually understand

4 5 THE COURAGEOUS FOLLOWER

that they are addictive, we cannot appreciate their force . We must learn

how to counteract this dark tendency of power. The changes occurring in the world make it an opportune time to

develop new models of followership . In the past, centralized organizations

used relatively crude instruments and blunt force to coordinate resources

in pursuit of their objectives. If you were building a pyramid, this method of organization worked terrifically. If you were laying a railroad, it also worked well. It even worked for a while if you were building cars on an assembly line . Dominant leaders and compliant followers were able to get

the job done . In information age organizations , however, hundreds of

decentralized units process and rapidly act on highly varied information

within the design and purpose of the organization . This requires an

entirely different relationship between leaders and followers . Additionally, in both the West and the East, a new social contract is

being formulated. In the largest organizations, we are no longer guaran­

teed employment . Our health benefits and retirement pla_ns are being

made portable. Leaders and organizations will no longer take care of us .

Paternalism is gone. We need to take care of ourselves and each other.

In a deep way this is liberating. A central problem in the leader-fol­

lower relationship is its tendency to become a parent-child relationship,

a relationship in which the follower is dependent and unable to relate to

the leader on an equal footing . A new model of followership can help us reorient ourselves and our

relationships with leaders . I am choosing the image of the "courageous fol­

lower" to build a model of followership because courage is so antitheti­

cal to the prevailing image of followers and so crucial to balancing the

relationship with leaders . Courageous followership is built on the platform of courageous rela­

tionship. The courage to be right , the courage to be wrong, the courage

to be different from each other. Each of us sees the world through our own

eyes and experiences . Our interpretation of the world thus differs . In rela­

tionships, we struggle to maintain the validity of our own interpretation

while learning to respect the validity of other interpretations. The danger in the leader-follower relationship is the assumption that

the leader's interpretation must dominate . If this assumption exists on

INTRODUCTION

the part of either the leader or the follower, they are both at risk . The

leader's openness to diversity, empowering others , breakthrough thinking,

and being challenged and learning from followers will drop precipitously.

Followers will abandon the ir unique perspectives and healthy dissension ,

which are at the heart of the creative process and innovation .

Contemporary leadership texts make compelling arguments for leaders

to drive fear out of organizations, to share power, to invite feedback , to en­

courage participation . The leaders likely to read and respond to these argu­

ments are the ones already open to change. What about those who cannot

be their own agents of change , who do not walk the talk? I believe that

courageous followers can and must be agents of change for such leaders .

But powerful socialization mechanisms, which served centralized bureau­

cracies well and taught followers to obediently follow, are still largely in force.

The awesome shaping powers of school, organized religion, sports teams,

the military, and large corporations are weakening, but still , whatever else

they teach, they condition followers to obey. Expulsion for nonconformity

is a very real threat. The conditioning begins at an age when children are still

utterly dependent on their parents for survival and experience consider­

able anxiety about the consequences of not obeying. Our institutions play

on this anxiety and, wittingly or not, reinforce it until followers often do

become the timid creatures we emotionally reject identifying with.

We must examine this programming of the follower's role and envision

what the role can become . What are our attitudes toward leaders? Where

do our loyalties ultimatel y lie? What outcomes are worse than expul­

sion? What power do we have to support leaders who are striving to serve

their group? And what obligation and power do we have to change things

when higher loyalties are betrayed? How courageous do we dare to be?

We have not had a lot of cultural support for doing this . Our mythol­

ogy until recently has focused on hero-leaders who perform remarkable

feats and successfully challenge villain-leaders. We have lacked common­

man, common-woman heroes who stay true to their own lights while help­

ing leaders follow theirs . Supportive "number twos" have not historically

attracted much press coverage or six-figure publishing advances . Whistle­

blowers have fared considerably less well , their lives often seriously disrupted,

with few rallying to their support . It is only very recently that we have

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THE COURAGEOUS FOLLOWER

begun to see exceptions to this pattern. The time has come for leaders and

followers to develop and honor new models for relating to each other.

I will first explore the dynamics of the leader-follower relationship.

What binds the leader and follower together? What are the underlying

moral, emotional, and psychological forces at work? What are the respec­

tive powers each has in the relationship? I will then present a model of

how courageous followers can improve that relationship for the benefit of

themselves, their leaders, and the organization. There are four dimensions in which a courageous follower operates

within a group, and a fifth dimension in which the follower operates

either within or outside the group depending on the response of the lead­

ership. The model will explore each of these dimensions as a way to com­

pare our current followership practices with how we might develop the

follower role.

THE FIVE DIMENSIONS OF COURAGEOUS FOLLOWERSHIP

THE COURAGE TO ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY

Courageous followers assumeresponsibility for themselves and the organ­

ization. They do not hold a paternalistic image of the leader or organi­

zation; they do not expect the leader or organization to provide for their

security and growth, or to give them permission to act. Courageous fol­

lowers discover or create opportunities to fulfill their potential and max­

imize their value to the organization. They initiate values-based action to

improve the organization's external activities and its internal processes.

The "authority" to initiate comes from the courageous follower's under­

standing and ownership of the common purpose, and from the needs of

those the organization serves.

THE COURAGE TO SERVE

Courageous followers are not afraid of the hard work required to serve a

leader. They assume new or additional responsibilities to unburden the

INTRODUCTION

leader and serve the organization. They stay alert for areas in which their

strengths complement the leader's and assert themselves in these areas.

Courageous followers stand up for their leader and the tough decisions a

leader must make if the organization is to achieve its purpose. They are as

passionate as the leader in pursuing the common purpose.

THE COURAGE TO CHALLENGE

Courageous followers give voice to the discomfort they feel when the

behaviors or policies of the leader or group conflict with their sense of

what is right. They are willing to stand up, to stand out, to risk rejection,

to initiate conflict in order to examine the actions of the leader and group

when appropriate. They are willing to deal with the emotions their chal­

lenge evokes in the leader and group. Courageous followers value orga­

nizational harmony and their relationship with the leader, but not at the

expense of the common purpose and their integrity.

THE COURAGE TO PARTICIPATE

IN TRANSFORMATION

When behavior that jeopardizes the common purpose remains unchanged,

courageous followers recognize the need for transformation. They cham­

pion the need for change and stay with the leader and group while they

mutually struggle with the difficulty of real change. They examine their

own need for transformation and become full participants in the change

process as appropriate.

THE COURAGE TO TAKE MORAL ACTION

Courageous followers know when it is time to take a stand that is differ­

ent from that of the leader's. They are answering to a higher set of values.

The stand may involve refusing to obey a direct order, appealing the order

to the next level of authority, or tendering one's resignation. These and

other forms of moral action involve personal risk. But service to the com­

mon purpose justifies and sometimes demands acting. If attempts to redress the morally objectionable situation fail, a follower faces the more difficult

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THE COURAGEOUS FOLLOWER

prospect of whether to become a whistleblower, with the greatly increased

risks this poses to both the follower and the organization.

Enriching the original model are two chapters added in the subsequent

editions.

THE COURAGE TO SPEAK TO THE HIERARCHY

The five classes of courageous follower behaviors assume a degree of rela­

tionship with the leader. In large hierarchical and global organizations,

policies or directives often originate several levels above the follower, from

individuals with whom the follower has little or no contact. How do those

lower in the hierarchy, or far removed from the formal power centers,

effectively communicate with those near the top of the hierarchy? How

do they ensure that the most senior leaders of the organization have the

data they need to make well-informed decisions? And how do nonhier­

archical methods of communication that leverage the power of networks

interface with these hierarchies? Courageous followers give careful thought

to the application of courageous follower principles in these contexts and

develop the sensitivities and strategies required to speak effectivelyto the

hierarchy.

THE COURAGE TO LISTEN TO FOLLOWERS

After exploring the model and applications of courageous followership, I

will conclude with an exploration of the leader's responsibility to sup­

port the conditions of courageous followership and to respond produc­

tively to acts of courageous followership. This is harder to do than it

appears to be on the surface. When done well, it offers powerful paybacks

for the leader and the organization. When done poorly, both leaders'

careers and their organizations suffer.

The world is fitfully evolving to a more egalitarian culture. Leadership and

followership are evolving. Leaders are increasingly becoming a hub in a

complex system of multiple wheels and hubs and spokes. Dynamic fol­

lower-follower relations are becoming as essential as dynamic leader-fol-

INTRODUCTION

lower and follower-leader relations. The realities of knowledge-driven

organizations require this evolution. Nevertheless, in all evolutionary

processes, the prospects for the emerging stage of development often look

dubious. There will be times while reading this book when you might

wince at suggested behaviors and think, "Get real!" For some leaders the

suggested approach will be unreal or at least uncomfortable. For others,

who have allowed contemporary cultural changes to seep into their pat­

terning, the approach presented here will be recognizable and welcome.

The leader's reactions are of secondary importance, however, to the actions

of the follower. That is why this book focuses on the courage of the fol­

lower; we are not talking about comfortable, risk-free behavior.

Most of us will have ample opportunity to experiment with and

develop new models of courageous followership in the course of "ordi­

nary" living. We will help our organizations compete more efficiently,

make them more humane and environmentally thoughtful, help our com­

munity groups function more responsively, perhaps even teach our chil­

dren to be more courageous in relating to legitimate authority figures and

illegitimate ones such as schoolyard bullies who, unchecked, grow into

workplace or political bullies.

But the extraordinary also occurs: the opportunity to help a leader make

a bold peace initiative, the discovery of abusive practices that demand

reversal, the chance to influence leadership practices that may bring an

organization to a crossroads in choosing the core values by which it will

live. To the degree we have become strong and comfortable with new

models of followership, those models will serve us well when we find our­

selves in situations where the consequences are profound.

Whether we are dealing with the ordinary or extraordinary, the chal­

lenge a follower faces is significant. This book is designed to give the coura­

geous follower the insights and tools needed to meet that challenge.