Followership: When Leadership Is Not Enough

Written by James Jurack, President, Birchwood Consulting Exclusively for Construction Executive Submitted by Trade Press Services November 2006

Is there anything more frustrating for a company than a project team that has lost its ability to function? Despite the best of intentions, a team can splinter due to differences among its members based upon any number of factors. The team becomes dysfunctional.

It’s easy and, in some cases justifiable, to point the finger at the team leader. After all, the first evaluation of leadership is the company or team success or failure. However, even a very effective leader who is highly skilled at motivating others cannot always convince everyone on the team of the tactical necessity to accomplish corporate strategy. Why? Because something is missing. It’s called followership.

Followership – An Ignored Concept

The concept of followership can best be explained as the willingness of team members to subjugate individual egos to the greater good – the successful completion of the goal or task. They experience pride of achievement not from individual contributions, but from the overall success of the enterprise.

To some, this may seem almost utopian in concept and a theory perhaps best left to business school lectures. The fact is that too often, particularly in the construction industry, members of a team approach a project with the idea that turf must be protected, regardless of the outcome – a surefire recipe for failure. Yet, a major obstacle such as a turf war can be overcome when the team concentrates on critical analysis as shown in the following example.

A well-known company’s product introduction team found itself in a dispute between the marketing and engineering departments over the design of a cab for new construction equipment. Marketing argued that operator visibility was inadequate and limited by obstructions; engineering defended the model while finance worried about the costs of marketing’s proposed changes. The team leader could have easily rendered the decision, but instead reminded all members of their responsibility to cumulatively create a product that meets customer acceptance, rollover and intrusion protection, and operator comfort requirements. Engineering agreed to modify the cab.

The Role of Leadership

The above example illustrates followership’s essentials. One is that team leadership by edict can, at times, be counterproductive because it diminishes the role of the individuals and may even stifle creativity. At the same time, followership does not mean abdication of the leader’s responsibilities. Those begin with team selection.

In his bestseller, Good to Great, Jim Collins discusses the need for senior managers to make certain they have “the right people on the bus.” Collins contends “the wrong people can’t be motivated to do the right thing.” To get the right people on the bus, Collins argues, you have to get the wrong people off. It articulates his belief that no leader can lead unless the followers are willing to follow, and he stresses the amount of “sheer rigor needed with regard to people decisions in order to take a company from good to great.”

The leader should encourage other points of view and perhaps even allow challenges to the goal, but only at the front end when the team first meets. Once the commitment is made and strategic direction is decided, then it’s time for team members to concentrate on their individual tasks in fulfilling the already established goal.

Followership begins with the leader’s explanation of each team member’s role, its importance and how the project or task fits into the broader picture for the company. Equally important, the leader must unmistakably convey the consequences of failure, such as reduced market share. Communication is especially vital in developing guidelines and standards for judging each member’s performance on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Then each individual can decide the best approach in much the same way as a junior officer in the military carries out a senior officer’s orders.

No Accountability? No Followership

The work of individual team members should be included as part of their annual performance appraisal, another way to assure commitment. We have seen teams become so dysfunctional that managers took pride in their ability to actively work against elements of the strategic plan with which they personally disagreed. Accountability makes this scenario unlikely since individuals, including rising corporate superstars, will understand that parochial self-interests will not be allowed to supersede the desired outcome, especially when an evaluation may be at stake. Their roles can be compared to the great violinists in a symphony orchestra who must play together as one or produce a cacophony of sound rather than orchestral music.

In some corporate cultures, team members report to their supervisors (those turf issues again), a practice that is bound to disrupt the process and erode any semblance of followership. All team members must update the leader directly.

Management by Committee versus Followership

Followership should not be confused with management by committee. That’s because the latter constitutes a failure by the leader to convince team members of the importance of their task and a failure by followers to accept corporate direction and the teamwork concept. Because these committees tend to lack hierarchical structure, disagreeing members are less likely to contribute.

But what happens when the leader decides contrary to the team’s wishes? If followership is achieved, the team understands its responsibilities to support the decision. A.V. Birla, chairman of India’s Hindalco, decided to build an electric power generating plant despite his team’s vote of nine-to-one against the project. After an awkward silence, one team member spoke up. “When do we get started?” he asked. History does not record the identity of this committed individual, but his response provides a classic case study of followership. Hindalco has since become the world’s lowest cost producer of aluminum.

An Emphasis Beyond Leadership

Clearly, the above examples illustrate that success is often as dependent upon good followership as it is on good leadership. Yes, the leader is responsible for the makeup of the team and the ultimate completion of the task. However, without committed followers, the jigsaw puzzle that is teamwork is missing one of its most important pieces. Acknowledging the need for good followers is recognizing that success is not solely incumbent upon leadership.

That is why it’s time to adjust the concepts of participatory management and task team organization. It’s time to recognize and cultivate successful followership. So when do we get started?

About the Author:

James Jurack is President of Birchwood Consulting International, LTD, a worldwide business development and marketing consulting firm providing solutions for durable goods and capital equipment manufacturing industries. For further information, please visit www.birchwoodci.net or call 262-241-9900.