What is Followership? (#121)
Leadership and Followership
One of the paradoxes of leadership is that great leaders need to be able to be great followers as well. A Chief Executive Officer still reports to a board and has to follow their directions. A football coach reports to an owner (or general manager) and has to follow his directions. A battalion commander reports to a brigade commander in the Army and has to follow her boss’s directions. And so on and so on.
Barbara Kellerman’s excellent book Followership is worth reading to expand your perspective on followers. Her definitions of followership is “the relationship between a subordinate and a superior, as well as the response of the former to the latter.” She goes on to add that good followers contribute to an organization, supports good leaders, and opposes bad leaders. I’ve previously talked about followership in posts #64 and #74 , but the concept is worth revisiting.
In bicycle racing, a domestique is a rider who works for the benefit of their team and leader, rather than trying to win the race. In French, domestique basically translates as "servant.” The use of the term dates back to 1911, when it was used in the newspaper L’Auto to talk derisively about a rider pacing another rider. The domestique is valued in cycling due to the advantages of aerodynamics — the person at the front of the peloton works hard to make the group go fast while those in the back don’t work as much. A domestique is a great follower.
Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Great Followership
Liege-Bastogne-Liege is a 140.9 kilometer (mile) race in Belgium that is one of cycling’s classic races, or one day event. This year, the race was held on April 25th. Liege-Bastogne-Liege (or LBL) is characterized by multiple short, steep climbs. It is considered the most physically arduous of the classics and the race winner usually has to have a combination of stamina and explosiveness.
Anna van der Breggen is the 31-year old Dutch women’s world champion in the road race. She rides for Team SD Worx and has had an amazing spring with wins at La Fleche Wallonne and Omloop Het Neuwsblad. One of her teammates is Demi Vollering, a 24-year old Dutch cyclist. van der Breggen is faster in the climbs, but Vollering is faster in a sprint.
After hours in the saddle, the tough climbs of the Ardennes had whittled the pack down. With about 10 kilometers to go in the race, 5 women — van der Breggen, Vollering, Katarzyna Niewiadoma (a rider for Canyon-SRAM), Elisa Longo Borghini (a rider for Trek-Segefredo), and Annemiek van Vleuten (a rider for Team Movistar) and Van Vleuten were the only ones left. Evaluating the group, van der Breggen decided that the best role for her was to be a follower or domestique — she went to the front of the group and worked hard to put her teammate, Vollering, in position to win the sprint. van der Breggen’s tactic was successful, Vollering sprinted hard and beat van Vleuten to the finish line. It is hard to imagine another sport where the world champion turns into a worker for the good of a teammate. But that is cycling.
Anna van der Breggen exhibited all the qualities of a great follower, especially judgement, loyalty, and ego management. The great qualities of a follower are:
Competence
Work ethic
Judgement
Initiative
Loyalty
Ego management
Think when and where you, as a leader, must be a great follower. Do you exhibit the six qualities — competence, work ethic, judgement, initiative, loyalty, ego management — when you serve as a follower? Are you like Anna van der Breggen and can turn from a great leader into a great follower who leads your co-worker and team to victory?
Go on the offense and be a great follower.
SEO Update
In post #119 I talked about Search Engine Optimization around the keyword “adhocracy culture.” Over the past week 500 people visited the web page and 26 people arrived due to searching for “adhocracy culture.” The two dozen searches was enough to move my search position from #16 to #9. For a little while it was #8 and on the first page of the search results. Thanks to everyone for helping out.