Leaders and Their Followers The Value of Exemplary Followers

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Leaders and Their FollowersThe Value of
Exemplary Followers

• Kari L. Kovar
• Principle Consultant
• Stamats
• [phone] ext. 5117
• kari.kovar_at_stamats.com

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Sources

• First, a survey of college presidents and vice
  presidents conducted in 1998
• Second, Ira Chaleffs The Courageous Follower
  Standing Up To and For Our Leaders
• Third, Robert Kelleys The Power of Followership
  How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and
  Followers Who Lead Themselves

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Goals of this Presentation

• Examine the relationship between leaders and
  followers
• Help all of us to be better followers and
  leaders

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If you want one year of prosperity, grow
grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow
trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow
people. Chinese proverb
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Leadership from the Eye of the Follower

• Two out of five bosses have questionable
  abilities to lead
• One in seven leaders is someone that followers
  see as a potential role model to emulate
• Less than half of the leaders are able to instill
  trust in subordinates
• Nearly 40 percent of leaders
• Have ego problems
• Are threatened by talented subordinates
• Have a need to act superior
• Do not share the limelight

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How Leaders Undermine Followers

• Have no sense of vision
• She constantly changes her mind about important
  issues. There is no consistent vision. Everyone
  is going in circles and nothing important ever
  gets accomplished.
• Refuse to listen
• My president believes that he is always right.
  He simply will not listen. His body language,
  demeanor and how he speaks to his staff
  constantly reinforce the impression that he knows
  more than anyone. After a while we just give up
  trying to contribute.

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How Leaders Undermine Followers

• Cannot make a decision
• We have three strong vice presidents who often
  have different approaches to solving a problem,
  and the senior VP refuses to take charge and make
  a decision. As a result, we spend all of our time
  rehashing the same things. He calls it consensus
  management. We call it a waste of time.
• Betrayed a trust or were dishonest
• I listened to the president tell a parent
  something that we both knew wasnt true. This put
  me in an impossible position because I knew I
  would have to deal with that parent later.

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• It is hard to imagine how a college or university
  can thrive in todays competitive and changing
  environment without the shared enthusiasm,
  energy, and passions of both leaders and their
  followers. Inspired people working together will
  be the architects of the great universities of
  the 21st century.
• Michael Ferrari, President
• Texas Christian University

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What are you doing? Im writing an article on
followership. What? Run that by me
again. Followershipthe flip side of
leadership. Oh, you mean the people who need
to be told what to do? The sheep? No, I mean
people who know what to do without being
toldthe people who act with intelligence,
independence, courage, and a strong sense of
ethics. Im interested in what separates
exemplary followers from those who perpetuate
the negative stereotypes. I believe the value of
followers to any organization is
enormous. Without his armies, after all,
Napoleon was just a man with grandiose
ambitions.
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Three Astonishing Observations

• On average, leaders contribute no more than 20
  percent to the success of most organizations
• Followers are critical to the remaining 80
  percent
• Most people, whatever their title, spend more
  time working as followers than as leaders
• We spend more time reporting to people than
  having people report to us

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The Myth of Leadership

• Thomas Carlyle On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the
  Heroic in History
• The theory of the great man and the cult of
  leadership
• Almost every college in the country has an
  institute or seminar or program on leadership
• But there isnt a program anywhere on what it
  means to be an exemplary follower
• The (too) high cost of leader worship
• Consider Bennis

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Warren Bennis

• The manager administers the leader innovates
• The manager is a copy the leader is the original
• The manger focuses on systems and structure the
  leader focuses on people
• The manager relies on control the leader
  inspires trust
• The manager has a short-range view the leader
  has a long-range view
• The manager asks how and when the leader asks
  what and why
• The manager has his eye always on the bottom
  line the leader has his eye on the horizon
• The manager imitates the leader originates
• The manager accepts the status quo the leader
  challenges it
• The manager is the classic good soldier the
  leader is his own person
• The manager does things right the leader does
  the right things

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Some Key Questions

• What is a follower? What is followership?
• Can we have a meaningful discussion of
  followership without a discussion of leadership?
• Why is leadership so important in higher
  education?
• What about followership?
• Why do you think the idea, and ideal, of
  followership is so difficult for us to deal with?

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Ira Chaleff, in The Courageous Follower, notes
that the term follower 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 powerful followers
supporting powerful leaders, the sooner we can
fully develop and test models for dynamic,
self-responsible, synergistic relationships in
our organizations.
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Followers and leaders both orbit around the
organizations purpose followers do not orbit
around the leader!
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The mark of a great leader is the development and
growth of followers.The mark of a great
follower is the growth of leaders.
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Finding Your Followership Style
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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rarely
Occasionally Almost Always

• 1. Does your work help you fulfill some societal
  goal or personal dream that is important to you?
• 2. Are your personal work goals aligned with the
  organization's priority goals?
• 3. Are you highly committed to and energized by
  your work and organization, giving them your best
  ideas and performance?
• 4. Does your enthusiasm also spread to and
  energize your co-workers?
• 5. Instead of waiting for or merely accepting
  what the leader tells you, do you personally
  identify which organizational activities are most
  critical for achieving the organization's
  priority goals?
• 6. Do you actively develop a distinctive
  competence in those critical activities so that
  you become more valuable to the leader and the
  organization?
• 7. When starting a new job or assignment, do you
  promptly build a record of successes in tasks
  that are important to the leader?
• 8. Can the leader give you a difficult assignment
  without the benefit of much supervision, knowing
  that you will meet your deadline with
  highest-quality work and that you will fill in
  the cracks" if need be?
• 9. Do you take the initiative to seek out and
  successfully complete assignments that go above
  and beyond your job?
• 10. When you are not the leader of a group
  project, do you still contribute at a high level,
  often doing more than your share?

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rarely
Occasionally Almost Always

• 11. Do you independently think up and champion
  new ideas that will contribute significantly to
  the leader's or the organization's goals?
• 12. Do you try to solve the tough problems
  (technical or organizational), rather than look
  to the leader to do it for you?
• 13. Do you help out other co-workers, making them
  look good, even when you don't get any credit?
• 14. Do you help the leader or group see both the
  upside potential and downside risks of ideas or
  plans, playing the devil's advocate if need be?
• 15. Do you understand the leader's needs, goals,
  and constraints, and work hard to help meet them?
  
• 16. Do you actively and honestly own up to your
  strengths and weaknesses rather than put off
  evaluation?
• 17. Do you make a habit of internally questioning
  the wisdom of the leader's decision rather than
  just doing what you are told?
• 18. When the leader asks you to do something
  that runs contrary to your professional or
  personal preferences, do you say "no" rather than
  ''yes"?
• 19. Do you act on your own ethical standards
  rather than the leader's or the group's
  standards?
• 20. Do you assert your views on important issues,
  even though it might mean conflict with your
  group or reprisals from the leader?

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Finding Your Followership Style

• Add the scores from the following
• questions (independent thinking)
• 1. _____
• 5. _____
• 11. _____
• 12. _____
• 14. _____
• 16. _____
• 17. _____
• 18. _____
• 19. _____
• 20. _____
• TOTAL _____

• Add the scores from the following
• questions (active engagement)
• 2. _____
• 3. _____
• 4. _____
• 6. _____
• 7. _____
• 8. _____
• 9. _____
• 10. _____
• 13. _____
• 15. _____
• TOTAL _____

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Add up your ratings on the independent thinking
items. Mark the total on the vertical axis of the
graph to the right. Repeat the procedure for
the active engagement items and mark the total on
the horizontal axis. Now plot your scores on
the graph by drawing perpendicular lines
connecting your two scores.
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Characterizing Your Followership Style
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Determining Your Followership Style

• Pragmatic follower
• Alienated follower
• Conformist follower
• Passive follower
• Exemplary follower

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The Pragmatic Follower

• Positive
• Keeps things in perspective
• Plays by the rules and regulations
• Negative
• Plays political games
• Risk averse and prone to cover their tracks
• Carries out assignments with middling enthusiasm
• Believes that
• Staying within the rules is important
• Should try to avoid uncertainty and instability

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The Alienated Follower

• Positive
• A maverick who thinks for his/herself
• Plays the devils advocate
• Negative
• Troublesome, cynical
• Not a team player
• Believes that
• Their leader does not fully recognize or utilize
  their talents

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The Conformist Follower

• Positive
• Accepts assignments easily
• Trusts and commits his/herself to the team and
  the leader
• Seeks to minimize conflict
• Negative
• Lacks own ideas
• Unwilling to make unpopular decisions
• Averse to conflict
• Believes that
• Following the established order is more important
  than outcomes

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The Passive Follower

• Positive
• Relies on the leaders judgment and thinking
• Seldom resists
• Negative
• Just putting in their time, little else
• Requires an inordinate amount of supervision
• Believes that
• The organization doesnt want their ideas
• The leader is going to do what he/she wants anyway

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The Exemplary Follower

• Positive
• Contributes above and beyond
• Seeks to add value and assist others
• Negative
• Highly idealistic can suffer disillusionment
• Burnout
• Believes that
• Their contribution is important even essential

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Personal Qualities and Characteristics Leaders
Expect from Exemplary Followers

• High self-esteem
• Intelligence
• Enthusiasm
• Strong communication skills
• Initiative
• Energy
• Courage
• Political astuteness
• And the two qualities listed most often by
  leaders?
• Cooperation and loyalty

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Characteristics of the Exemplary Follower

• Job skills How exemplary followers add value
• Focus and commitment
• Competence in critical-path activities
• Initiative in increasing their value to the
  organization
• Organizational skills How exemplary followers
  nurture and leverage a web of organizational
  relationships with
• Team members
• Organizational networks
• Leaders
• Values How exemplary followers exercise a
  courageous conscience which guides their job
  activities and organizational relationships

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How Exemplary Followers Add Value

• Focus on the goal, not the job
• Do a great job on critical-path activities
  related to the goal
• Contribute to the growth of other team members
• Help keep the team on track
• Take the initiative to increase their value to
  the organization
• Realize they add value not just by going above
  and beyond their work, but in being who they
  aretheir experiences, ideals, and dreams

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Exemplary Followers Responsibilities
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Four Key Responsibilities of Exemplary Followers

• Support the leaders decisions
• Challenge the leader
• Encourage the leader
• Defend the leader

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Support the Leaders Decision

• Stress the need for dialogue before important
  decisions are made
• Refuse to engage in criticism of the leader with
  subordinates
• Keep communication channels to the leader open
• Remind the leader to spend time among
  subordinates
• Keep in mind that how a decision is communicated
  is often as important as the decision itself

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Challenge the Leader

• Must talk to the leader privately rather than
  unloading on him or her in a public forum
• Must pay attention to timing and try not to
  approach the leader when he or she is dealing
  with a crisis or a deadline
• When they sit down with the leader, they must try
  to present the issue as a joint problem that
  needs to be discussed, rather than the leaders
  stupid decision. They state the issue clearly and
  succinctly from their viewpoint and have the
  facts straight and at hand

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Encourage the Leader

• Average presidency now runs about four years
• One-third of all presidential searches are
  reopened
• Every time someone calls I start a mental
  clock ticking to measure how much time passes
  before they ask me for something
• It is lonely at the top
• Presidents as people

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Defend the Leader

• Loyalty to the leader as an individual
• Active support
• Confidentiality
• Loyalty to the decisions that the leader makes
• In the leader-follower relationship, leaders have
  an obligation to listen to the input of followers
  
• In return, followers have an obligation to
  support the resulting decision

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What Exemplary Followers Expect
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Qualities Exemplary Followers Expect from Leaders

• Honesty
• Forward-looking
• Inspiring
• Competent
• Fair-minded

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Exemplary Followers Expect Their Leaders to...

• Embrace exemplary followers as partners and
  co-creators
• Partnership means sharing information
• Partners co-create the vision and mission
• Partners share the risks and the rewards
• Create environments where exemplary followers
  flourish
• Be less a hero and more a hero maker

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Cultivating Exemplary Followers
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Strategies for Cultivating Exemplary Followers

• Work to increase the variety and complexity of
  assignments they receive
• Seek to enhance their skill sets
• Share the credit
• Never undermine their authority
• Mentor followers who hope to assume larger
  leadership roles
• Encourage and enhance dialogue
• Heighten their sense of accountability for the
  decisions they make
• Keep their confidences
• Empower them
• Acknowledge their value, both publicly and
  privately
• Reward them in ways they find meaningful
• Trust your followers

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Empowering Followers

• Rosabeth Moss Kanter cites four principles in
  which followers might become more powerful
• Give people important work to do on critical
  issues
• Give people discretion and autonomy over their
  tasks and resources
• Give people visibility and provide recognition
  for their efforts
• Build relationships for your people, connecting
  them with powerful people and finding them
  sponsors and mentors

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Meditation on FollowershipIra Chaleff

• I am a steward of this group and share
  responsibility for its success.
• I am responsible for my successes and failures
  and for continuing to learn from them.
• I am responsible for the attractive and
  unattractive parts of who I am.
• I can support leaders and counsel them, and
  receive support and counsel from them. Our common
  purpose is our best guide.
• I have the power to help leaders use their power
  wisely and effectively.
• By staying true to my values, I can serve others
  well and fulfill my potential. Thousands of
  courageous acts by followers can, one by one,
  improve the world.
• Courage always exists in the present. What can I
  do today?

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Questions, Comments, Thoughts
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Bibliography

• Chaleff, Ira. The Courageous Follower Standing
  Up To and For Our Leaders
• Gardner, John. On Leadership
• Greenleaf, Robert K. Servant Leadership A
  Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and
  Greatness
• Habecker, Eugene B. Leading with a Followers
  Heart
• Katzenbach, Jon R. and Douglas Smith. The Wisdom
  of Teams
• Kelly, Robert E. In Praise of Followers,
  Harvard Business Review

• Kelly, Robert E. The Power of Followership How
  to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and
  Followers Who Lead Themselves
• Kriegel, Robert. Sacred Cows Make the Best
  Burgers
• Sevier, Robert A. How to Be An Exemplary
  Follower, Trusteeship

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• Kari L Kovar, Principle Consultant
• Stamats, Inc.
• [phone] ext. 5117 kari.kovar_at_stamats.co
  m