Aristotle said that “…he who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander…” Put this into the context of leadership today, I would assert that to be a good, or even great leader, you need to be a good, or great follower. Followership is the other side of leadership! In this short article I take a quick dive into the art of followership.

Followership: If You Want to Be a Good Leader, You Need to Be a Good Follower

WARNING: This has nothing to do with how many ‘Followers’ you have managed to acquire on your social media!

Anyone in a leadership position, no matter who you are, no matter how senior, whether CEO or General, or most junior manager or Non-Commissioned Officer, in any company or within the military, is also a Follower, or you should be. I would also strongly assert that if you cannot follow, then you cannot, or will not, be able to lead.

The CEO follows the direction of their Board or Board Chair, the General follows the Government of the day or their Prime Minister or President. If you lead, then you follow. To be a good leader, you must be a good Follower.

To really understand the intricacies of good or great leadership, you need to understand what it means to follow orders, direction, or guidance, and you need to be prepared, when your leader decides, to unequivocally accept that decision, and get on with it. But equally, you need to have the good grace to let your boss lead and be a great team member and Follower.

This doesn’t mean blindly following immoral, dangerous, unethical, or even illegal acts, and there are obviously things that you should, or shouldn’t do, if you were given such an order, but it does mean that once a ‘reasonable’ decision has been made, you need to take that decision and act on it as if it were your own. That is a key part of Followership.

A good leader will give their trusted advisors, their deputies, their C-Suite executives, or just their team members, the opportunity and an environment within which they can feel safe to express their views and opinions.

A good leader will make sure their people can bring their experience to bear in any discussion when decisions are being made, and a good leader will absolutely encourage this sort of activity. It is vital to give your people the floor and the space to do this because it helps to build trust, team belonging, and a shared experience.

And as a team member or Follower, it is your responsibility to work within this safe space, do your bit to support both your boss and your fellow team members, and ensure the sanctity of your work environment.

It is also worth remembering, however, that you will not necessarily know or fully understand the pressures or direction that your team leader has been given by those that they are following, and as such, it is highly likely that you will not always have the full or same picture as your manager.

What this brings with it of course, is a slightly different dynamic to the one that you are seeing, so when your manager asks for your view, acknowledges it, but then goes a different direction, and not necessarily with a full explanation, if there is mutual respect within your team, then you should be prepared to accept their decision, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it (from your perspective).

The fact that your boss has given you the opportunity to express your views is a majorly powerful factor, and should be taken as their acknowledgement of your expertise and skillset, even if they turn a different way; indeed it may be that they agree more with one of your colleagues, but again, the fact that you have been invited to contribute, even if it didn’t go your way, is the most important thing. You are still a critical part of the team and must not take decisions like this personally; that will undermine the team, and not do you any good either.

So, CEO’s decision made, when you walk out that office door, Follower head off, leader head back on, and whether you agree with the decision or not, you need to respect the decision of your boss and either own the decision yourself, or tell people that the CEO has decided on a particular direction and then state ‘so this is what we are going to do!’. To say to your team ‘you’ll never guess what the CEO has decided to do?! I told them that this was destined to fail but they just ignored me!’.

Not only does this undermine your boss, potentially at a time when to do so could be detrimental to the overall business, and de facto, the livelihood of all employees, but you also undermine yourself, your status as a more senior executive, and whether you realise it or not, you have just dropped down a peg or two in the eyes of your team.

I remember hearing many times throughout my working life, both at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where I was trained in the art of leadership, and in situations like UK Special Forces Selection course, instructors saying to the students ‘when you are given the privilege of command, take command, but when this is bestowed on someone else, have the good grace to let those in command be in command!’. This is the tenet to follow when you want to understand Followership.

It does not mean that you simply become a passenger of course; there is no quicker way to being kicked out of a team. Being a good Follower requires your full participation in the mission, and when called upon by the leader to give your view, advice, or perspective on a particular course of action, it is critical that you do this to the best of your ability.

It is all about mutual trust and respect, and if you want to be trusted and respected as a Follower or team member, then you need to ensure that you give your boss all the information that they need to enable them to make the best possible decisions.

The skills of a Follower are practically identical to those of the leader, so you can see why being a good Follower actually helps with your leadership journey, wherever that may take you. Honesty, integrity, courage, collaboration, discretion, critical thinking to name but a few, and none of these are amiss in a great leader.

And as a Follower, even when you are not in the presence of your leader, remember that you are always a Follower even when you are leading, and therefore, you owe it to your leader to always carry out their intent, even if they haven’t given you a specific task or mission, and to use your initiative to ensure that whatever your mission entails, the results meet the intent.