Followership (#64)

I have talked a lot about leadership over the past eight months. But, I haven’t talked about its converse — followership. Of course, followership has a bad reputation because it has connotations of someone acting like a sheep or a lemming. Most likely, being known as a “great follower” at your company doesn’t get you to the C-Suite. At its heart, followership is a pretty straightforward concept. It’s the ability to take direction well, be part of a team, deliver what is expected of you, and support the team or leader. How well the followers follow is just as important to an organization’s success as how well the leaders lead, right?

Within any organization, there is only one quarterback, one CEO, and one commanding officer. While each of them are leaders, each are followers at other times — of a coach, of the board or the investors, or of the next higher member of the chain of command. To be a good leader you need to be a good follower as well. To have an exceptional organization, you need both great leaders and great followers. There are six qualities to a great follower — competence, work ethic, judgement, initiative, loyalty, and ego management.

The US Army Ranger School (which I graduated from in 1994 and led from 2014-2016) teaches and rewards followership in two ways. The first is through daily rotating chains of command. One day a student might be the leader of the patrol and the next day the same student could be carrying the machine gun. No matter what the job, the Ranger student is expected to contribute to the success of the organization and the mission. The second is through the use of peer reports. At the end of each of the three major parts of Ranger School (Benning, Mountains, and Swamps) all the students fill out peer reports where they rank the fellow members of their squad from #1 to the last. Not helping the squad as a follower typically results in your peers ranking you last. When that happens you get an opportunity to redo that phase of Ranger School. Both rotating chains of command and peer reports encourage Ranger students to develop the skill of being a good follower and contributing to the success of the organization, no matter what their role. The emphasis on followership at Ranger School helped me the rest of my career.

US Army Ranger School teaches followership through rotating chains of command and peer evaluations. Here Ranger students paddle to Santa Rosa Island, Florida

There are six qualities to a great follower:

• Competence — a great follower has the ability to do the task successfully, efficiently, and effectively. Stuart Dreyfus and Hubert Dreyfus, while working at the University of California, Berkley, established five levels of competency:

  • Novice

  • Experienced Beginner

  • Practitioner

  • Knowledgeable practitioner

  • Expert

• Work ethic — a great follower is diligent, motivated, and committed to getting the job done on time and under budget.

• Judgement — a great follower takes direction but understands they have an obligation to do so only when the direction is proper and ethical.

• Initiative — a great follower knows when to demonstrate initiative, especially when given the purpose (or the why) of the task.

• Loyalty — a great follower is loyal to the organization and its goals. It is helpful to understand the organization’s purpose (see Post #53 ) to keep things in perspective. Followers remember that their obligation is to the organization, not a specific leader.

• Ego management — a great follower is able to subordinate their own ego for the greater good of the team or organization.

TFCG’s Currahee Mountain Leadership Experience works to build great leaders and great followers. Rotating chains of command, just like at Ranger School, puts everyone into a leadership and followership positions. At the end of your off-site, the attendees will do a peer evaluation to help provide feedback on how the team members can become a better follower. Interested in building both leaders and followers? Reach out here to start the discussion and get our brochure on the Currahee Mountain Leadership Experience.

Currahee Mountain, Georgia

Building great leaders and followers takes hard work and effort. Go on the offense to use innovative ways to develop the competence, work ethic, judgement, initiative, loyalty and ego management of your followers. Keep building your team during the remainder of 2020 and on into 2021.