LEADING THE FOLLOWER
With CEO salaries spiralling upwards and leadership studies
crowding the bookshelves, are companies in danger of focusing on the
minority that directs the company, instead of the majority that
drives it? We look at the power of effective followership
If you type the term “leadership” into Amazon’s search window,
you’ll be overwhelmed with choices—there are nearly a quarter of a
million books that deal with the subject. Yet the complementary
subject of “followership”—how to be a good follower and drive a
successful organization—yields a comparatively meager selection:
less than a couple of thousand titles. Even the art of bonsai has a
wider range of publications available to enthusiasts.
At the top of the followership list on Amazon, you will find a book
called Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing
Leaders, written by Barbara Kellerman, a lecturer in public
leadership at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government.
Kellerman, who has been researching, teaching and writing about
leadership issues for 25 years, is a relatively recent convert to
the idea that followers—be they employees, members of the military
or voluntary activists—have as much of a role to play in successful
organizations as leaders.
Forces for change
“The popular leadership literature still suggests that leaders
matter and followers do not,” Kellerman explains. She argues that
the culture that led to chief executives being paid million-dollar
salaries (many times more than their lowest-paid employees),
regardless of performance, is inexorably changing. “In the 21st
century, things are changing in both the private and public arena,
and the relationships between leaders and followers are changing,”
Kellerman argues. “Leaders are becoming less powerful and less
influential; followers are becoming more powerful and more
influential.”
Kellerman identifies two overriding forces that she believes are
driving this change: first, a growing resistance to authority and
second, the information revolution. The resistance to authority had
its roots in the political activism of the 1960s (in the US, for
example, it took the form of campus revolts against the Vietnam
War), when it was deemed acceptable to challenge those in charge as
had never been the case before.
Meanwhile, the information revolution led to the realization that
“information, not things, had become the world’s most powerful
resource”. This, Kellerman says, has become more evident in the age
of the internet, which has flattened organizational hierarchies and
meant that the physical borders between countries have become less
relevant. One can even detect the growing importance of followers in
the overwhelming popularity of user-generated content online and in
other media—a far cry from the days when communication was dominated
by broadcasters providing content for a passive audience.
Five varieties of follower
In her book, Kellerman categorizes followers into five distinct
types, based on the level of engagement they have with what they do:
Isolates—people who do not care about their leaders. By doing
nothing they further strengthen leaders who already have the upper
hand
Bystanders—people who observe but do not participate, people who are
disengaged from their leaders
Participants—people who are in some way engaged. They either clearly
favor their leaders or they oppose them. They invest what they have
(their time, for example) in making an impact
Activists—people who feel strongly about their leaders and act
accordingly. They work hard on behalf of their leaders or to
undermine or unseat them
Diehards—people who are deeply devoted or deeply opposed to their
leader and will do anything to keep them in place or oust them.
The book takes a look at some controversial groups of followers
throughout history. First, Kellerman looks at Bystanders and
highlights the famous murder of New York resident Kitty Genovese in
1964. Genovese was stalked and attacked as she returned home. The
attack lasted for more than half an hour but despite it being
witnessed by 38 people, no one reported it to the police. “No one
did anything because no one else did anything,” Kellerman points
out.
She then looks at the possible causes of the scandal surrounding the
arthritis drug Vioxx, arguing that Merck, the drug’s manufacturer,
was in desperate need of a new “blockbuster” product. The problem
was the Participants, “knowledge workers and researchers who wanted
badly for Vioxx to be a runaway success” and who provided guidance
to Chief Executive Raymond Gilmartin, who was neither a scientist
nor a physician.
As an example of Activists, she points to a group of socially
responsible investment funds called Green Century Capital
Management, shareholders in Apple Inc who suggested to the
technology firm that it should introduce a free recycling program
for obsolete iPods. Apple was persuaded and the scheme was
introduced.
Among the Diehards, Kellerman places corporate whistleblowers,
people who know that they may lose everything by raising their voice
in opposition to what the leaders say and do.
The need to lead
So how can today’s leaders manage their followers? Kellerman’s book
looks at the case of American electronics retailer Best Buy, whose
chief executive called for “bottom-up stealth innovation”. Two of
the firm’s human resources employees took this literally and
introduced a flexible working hours scheme on a trial basis without
asking their superiors which, Kellerman says, is a classic example
of “leading up”. It was so successful—it both reduced staff turnover
and increased productivity—that it eventually spread throughout the
firm.
Encouraging “leading up” is one way to manage. Engaging more with
employees is another. “Some smart leaders understand follower power,
both intuitively and intellectually,” Kellerman argues, identifying
Wal-mart’s CEO H. Lee Scott as one such leader. Thanks to Scott,
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, which had come under criticism recently,
started listening more to its opponents, and improved employee
healthcare while advocating an increase in the minimum wage.
In fact, despite the importance of her research into followers,
Kellerman emphasizes the continuing need for leaders. “What seems
clear is that most of the time it is important that followers
follow,” she says, reasoning that it is not only theoretically
impossible for everyone to be a leader, but also practically
impossible. “Major changes, good intentions and new nomenclatures
notwithstanding, what inevitably happens, in the workplace in as
every other place, is that some people lead and other people
follow,” she points out. “Even the most deliberately democratic of
our workplaces are informally, if not formally, rank-ordered.”
Kellerman argues that leaders provide individuals with safety,
security and a sense or order, with a group, a community, to which
they can belong and with someone who does the collective work.
Yet the continuing public focus on leadership is damaging, Kellerman
says. “Followers have always mattered far more than those of us
fixated on leaders have been ready to say.” She argues that in the
future, leaders and the organizations that employ them are going to
have to be more aware of their power. “Today’s corporate experts are
urging corporate leaders to get their followers to speak up,” she
argues. “Leaders who fail to harness those beneath them do so at
their peril.”
Companies aiming to prosper on the basis of collective competence
and responsibility must surely follow Kellerman’s lead.