THE F WORD – Making followership cool! In our current commercial culture have we become fixated on leadership alone?

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© Inspirational Development Group 2014

In our daily lives super heroes feature prominently: it is deep in our psyche to look for role model leaders, from the perfect political personality to the sporting icon, from the fashion industry to television, from pop stars to war heroes. We look for leaders everywhere… and we are frequently and inevitably disappointed.

And do graduates sense this and try to live up to an impossible false vision? It is common to see recruiting organisations looking for great leadership capabilities in young but not yet moulded graduates. The same young hopeful graduates then attempt to display their version of heroic and expected leadership qualities taken from possibly The Apprentice or Dragons Den or even Richard Branson. This spiral builds in velocity as each year goes by, leading to increasingly unrealistic expectations by employers and ever more unusual behaviour by graduates. Instead of graduates playing out televised leadership qualities, would it not be better to identify graduates for their great followership capability? Followership contributes significantly to the success of many organisations but our almost hard-wired obsession with “hero leaders” keeps us from considering its nature and importance. Type the words leadership and followership into your web browser and notice how the number of hits for

leadership far exceeds those for followership. Effective followers have the ability to transform a business but the skills required to do this are often ignored. Followers need to think for themselves, exercise control, and see colleagues as allies and leaders as equals. To be an effective follower, a graduate needs to be able to ask for forgiveness not permission, to take initiative and to develop the skill of disagreeing agreeably with leaders. If effective followership does not prevail at all levels, organisations risk deteriorating into havens of sheep-like yes-men, survivors and cynical alienated followers engaged in “corrosive corridor conversations” that erode confidence and lead to mediocre organisational and commercial performance.

As we learn to live in economically tough times, great followership principles need to become even more relevant. Graduates who don’t focus on the fundamental discipline of effective followership are putting their personal brands at risk and a business that does not develop and unleash their followership potential is not taking advantage of a powerful source of high performance. Development programmes offered to graduates need therefore to build their self-confidence as effective followers to help them act reliably and with integrity, ensuring the more basic tasks are performed correctly whilst encouraging them to be forthcoming with ideas for change and improvement.

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© Inspirational Development Group 2014 www.inspirationaldevelopment.com 57a Catherine Place +44 20 7798 2848 London, SW1E 6DY

A way to look at a role is by breaking it down into the different components we perform every day. Peter Drucker has identified four components: technical, administration, leadership and followership. We often over-emphasise the technical and administrative parts of our job by concentrating on expertise and processes that have a short-term task focus.

Conversely, leadership and especially followership are usually underestimated and therefore underdeveloped at each stage of the leadership pipeline as shown below.

Overuse of the technical and administration components can result in poor team motivation, and the perception of a hierarchical status that controls and exploits human resources as efficiently as possible.

To get the best out of people, an organisation should spend more time building leadership and followership effectiveness, and employees should rebalance their job roles by delegating more admin and technical tasks to be able to focus on leadership and followership.

Leadership is about optimising results by getting the best out of a 4 billion year old complex technology called people in the most effective way by constantly answering four important questions for each person: Why am I here? - Providing clarity of purpose, vision and direction What does that mean for me? - Helping people understand how their contribution practically relates to the big picture goals of the organisation How am I doing? - Giving people frequent, timely and useful feedback on all aspects of their contribution How can you help me to improve? - Raising the performance bar Followership is about how to get the job done for someone else. This is power from personal respect, and as followers are the primary contributors to the success of any organisational outcomes, improving followership skills will have a beneficial impact on business performance.

Robert Kelley in his Harvard Business Review article “In Praise of Followers” writes persuasively that Followership is a significantly undervalued insight into productivity, collaborative working, effective influencing and the forging of effective relationships.

He distinguishes between five types of followers: Sheep, Yes People, Survivors, Alienated Followers and Effective Followers.

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© Inspirational Development Group 2014 www.inspirationaldevelopment.com 57a Catherine Place +44 20 7798 2848 London, SW1E 6DY

SHEEP are passive and non-challenging. They perform the tasks given and little more and may come across as 9-5ers who have been brought up to expect that they should have a job for life. They seem to lack initiative, ambition, a sense of responsibility and a questioning mind. In some sectors they may end up being replaced by automated /re-engineered processes. YES PEOPLE are livelier than sheep but also often come across as un-enterprising. Like sheep, they seem to lack initiative and need a “leader” to provide them with direction, purpose and clarity. They can be overly/insincerely deferential and can be dangerous because they tell leaders what they want to hear but not what they need to know. SURVIVORS are capable performers who give up their independence over time in favour of political expediency. Politically astute, they use this insight to keep their thoughts to themselves even if they have valuable ideas for improving things. Their key objective is not to lead change but to survive it at all costs. ALIENATED FOLLOWERS are those often very bright employees who have been somehow turned off. They come across as

cynical and negative, being good at pointing out problems but seldom offer solutions. Their energy gets channelled into fighting the leadership and/or the organisation. They tend to sink gradually into disgruntled acquiescence, rarely questioning the leader’s efforts directly but preferring instead to take part in “corrosive corridor conversations”. EFFECTIVE FOLLOWERS are energetic, enthusiastic and take initiative. They point out problems AND offer solutions, calculating risk and asking for forgiveness not permission. They are good communicators and proactive networkers. Trustworthy and reliable, they deliver on promises and are clearly committed to something outside of themselves. Their partnership focus makes them see colleagues as allies and leaders as equals

The Leadership Pipeline shows how a business can develop leadership in each layer of their organisation by defining the different skills and competences required as leaders move from one level to the next. As an employee steps from one level to another, the time allocated for each of the four job components should be rebalanced accordingly and appropriate support provided by the organisation. Each of the shifts to a higher level represents a change in position and complexity. At each step, there are requirements on specific skills, time frames and focus of efforts. Unfortunately, many people within the Leadership Pipeline often work at the wrong level and do not achieve their full potential.

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© Inspirational Development Group 2014 www.inspirationaldevelopment.com 57a Catherine Place +44 20 7798 2848 London, SW1E 6DY

The Leadership Pipeline

As graduates start their journey through an organisation, the development of their technical expertise and administration skills is the basis on which to successfully build a career. However, the F word is often overlooked, with lasting negative effects for both the individual and the business. The only way a business can successfully compete in the current climate is by getting to grips with the importance of effective followership at all levels in the organisation….this will not only invigorate its graduates and all its staff but will empower them to really be effective all the time and every day with selfless commitment.

There is a clear similarity between the traits of outstanding followers and great leaders. If you’re not an effective follower, you are very unlikely going to be an effective leader.

Make it part of the commercial graduate language

Define it as a core graduate competence

Explain what it means to your organisation

Develop your graduate programme so that there is a consistent followership golden thread that runs through the graduate roadmap

Think carefully about the design of your graduate roadmap

Give followership senior level advocacy

Make followership real from the words of senior role models

Leadership is crucially important, but perhaps in searching so zealously for great leaders we have lost sight of the fact that not everyone can be – or wants to be – a “great leader”. However, effective followership is crucial for everyone.

It is only when high support through effective followership combines with high direction through effective leadership that large complex organisations can thrive in the challenging times ahead and exceed stakeholder expectations.

Andrew Perkins – Commercial Director, IDG

The Inspirational Development Group’s mission is to create measurable and sustainable change in individual and organisational behaviour. Since 2000, we have offered an extensive range of tailored leadership and team development programmes, centered on the unique proposition of combining Leadership, Followership and Partnership expertise with offices in London, Sandhurst, Pune - India, Muscat – Oman, Abu Dhabi and teams working in New York, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Jordan.

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