Leadership is the subject of countless courses, workshops, books and articles.
Everyone wants to understand what makes successful leaders, and leadership is often associated with a charismatic, subjugating role model, with the ability to get others to do things. How many times have I heard of someone with a strong personality, who is able to impose his will, as someone who has "a lot of leadership".
Indeed, leadership is the ability to direct, but to direct is above all to know how to give direction:
- a meaning, a goal;
- meaning, a significance;
- the desire to do, to succeed...
...in other words, make you want to be followed.
But how many leaders realize that their success depends on the willingness of certain individuals to follow them? There's no doubt about it: no leader gets where he or she is without the input and support of followers.
Far from being mere followers, they are actors with the power to choose: their organization, their leader and the energy invested in the action. In other words, they hold a large part of the power to make your projects a success... or not!
Most research on followers tends to explain their behavior in the context of leader development, rather than with a view to developing these actors to support leadership. Barbara Kellerman, a professor at Harvard University, is clear on the notion of followers: they are no less influential than the leader, on the contrary. According to the author,
it's time to give back the letters of nobility to those who, sometimes in the shadow of the leader, make all the difference.
Being a leader means knowing how to behave like a follower, i.e. knowing how to identify, understand and emulate the positive personality traits of those around you.
It would therefore be wise not to underestimate the qualities of followers, who know how to get the best out of the game by often exercising a leadership style that is... reversed. Five points to prove it:
1. WILL. Followers must follow directions, but they have an underlying obligation to themselves to do so only when the direction is ethical and appropriate. They don't follow leaders because they have to, but because they want to .
2. WORK ETHIC. Good followers are good workers. They're diligent, motivated, committed, attentive to detail and go the extra mile. Leaders have a responsibility to create an environment that enables these qualities.
3. COURAGE. Good followers have the courage to be honest with their leader. It takes a lot of courage to confront a leader with his concerns with his program or, worse still, with the leader himself. It's not for nothing that Churchill called courage "the first of the virtues, for all the others depend on it".
4. LOYALTY. Good followers respect their obligation to be loyal to their company. Loyalty is especially important when there are problems, interpersonal or otherwise, with a particular leader. Followers know that their obligation is to the company, not to a particular executive.
5. EGO MANAGEMENT. Good followers have their egos under control. They are team players in the broadest sense of the concept. For them, success is linked to the achievement of objectives, not to personal recognition and self-promotion. Sounds too good to be true, but it often is.
Followers will always be in the shadow of leaders. But there are no leaders without followers, and how followers follow is just as important to the company's success as how leaders lead.
Bibliography :
Kellerman, Barbara – Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders.
McCallum S., John – Followership: The Other Side Of Leadership.
NB: This article was published in n° 43/2019 of the magazine Monde Économique magazine.