The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

"Leaders" and "Followers"

There are no leaders without followers. And vice versa – there are no followers without leaders. As the old song had it, “You can’t have one without the other.”

About “leaders” - we often try to pretend that there are such people – or such functions – independently. Not possible. Media-made celebrities are “leaders” because they have devoted followers. People who get a lot of press usually have a lot of followers. Are they “leaders”? Is the president a “leader” because lots of folk voted for him (or her)?

If you follow some precept that you read somewhere but can’t attach a name to it, aren’t you still being led, even though anonymously? If you have a great need to be liked by others, who’s leading and who’s following? If you like someone and give them the benefit of the doubt, who’s leading (or following) whom? If you are a rabid fan of some rock star, are you the leader or the follower?

It seems obvious that you can’t have the one without the other. If you are in a position to shut off a  subordinate’s paycheck, does that make you a leader – or the other person a follower? If you follow someone’s lead out of fear – or ignorance - does that make a leader out of the other person, a bone fide follower out of you?

We’re not very good at thinking about interdependence in our culture. We’re more of a something-caused-something-else kind of culture. We have nouns and then we have verbs, so we are susceptible to thinking that the leader causes what followers do. If you consider that critically, you can see that it doesn’t quite work that way. I might be able to kill you, but there is no way I can force you to like me – or to follow my lead. Children understand that very well before they are forced into a somebody – caused – somebody else to do this or that view of the world.

The leader-follower relationship is a very complex one. To attribute the magic solely to a “leader” misses the point. If the leader needs a follower in order to be a leader, and if the follower needs a leader in order to be a follower, their interdependence can’t be “deconstructed.” The success of either depends upon the relationship. Ask any married couple. Ask any teacher. Ask any loser. Ask the person who provides her own leadership, and who follows her own leadership. The magic is in the compounding, not in the one or the other.

Are you following me here? Or, should you be?

Interviews with Yvonne DiVita: Followership

The concept of followership does not get enough press, as I've mentioned on this blog previously. I talk a bit about this in both Leadership and How Executives Fail, but not wishing to bore the reader with repeated mentions of my books, let's hear what happens in this conversation with Yvonne.

Sharing in Cyberspace: My Publisher Calls This Link Love

Recently I came across a blog written by Mary Schmidt which revealed a very smart and rangy intellect, and not just because she talked about one of my books.

The readers of this blog [yes, this one right here] would be rewarded by a visit to hers. She knows how to pursue an issue and pull in relevant observations. Refreshing!

Leadership: Can it be Taught?

Now, there's an old saw. In his recent book, Henry Mintzberg "slams B-schools for teaching leadership," according to Rob on Business Pundit (23 October last fall). Other than the fact that Henry has made a career out of "slamming" things leaderly and managerially, there's more at stake here than a jibe at B-schools for simply catering to their marketplace.

As soon as anything is made into an academic subject, it becomes fair game for the predators out there to stake their claim. Some do this by presuming to be the keepers of the keys to the vault. Others by stalking and exposing those who do so. Another way of looking at this is that "leadership" has been a celebrity concept now for several years. And you know that celebrities are fair game for critics and the business press papparazzi. In this case, teaching "leadership" is a bit like teaching the esoterics of philosophy or of advanced calculus just in case someone may someday have a need for the one or the other.

We don't have a shortfall of leaders. Ranging from adequate to horrible, we are overwhelmed with people ready to be seen as "leaders." What we do have is a shortage of competent followers--whether as citizens or as thinkers. So far as I know, there are no courses in B-schools (or elsewhere in universities or corporate training programs) on "followership." One pundit observed that we have 25,000 books on managing and leading, but only four on following. If we define "following" as learning the competencies for providing leadership, we would have a glimpse of reality. A competent follower always trumps an incompetent leader.

So, could anyone suppose that we actually need more of the latter?

Followership

A newsletter that is unique, because it almost always contains something of value to leaders or wannabes, is John Maxwell's "Leadership Wired," a monthly.

In the April issue, Maxwell writes about followership, a much-neglected component of leadership--since the one can't be any better than the other. We recently designed and are beta-testing an executive development program using almost exclusively the (small, by comparison) followership literature. In his "Maxwell Moment" of this issue, Maxwell quotes Colin Powell as follows:

"When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own."

It would be difficult to find a better guideline for courageous followership. One is reminded of the exchange between General Lee and General Longstreet near the beginning of Gettysburg.

Maxwell has a good eye for ideas that have practical value.

The Journey begins with a single ... post

What is this blog for? Why does it exist?

In this world of information overload, my purpose is to offer a quietly stimulating and intellectually rewarding space for collaborative thinking. The core template is this:

As we think, so shall we be.
And as we are, so shall we do.

That's why the full title of my first book is Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing.

Thinking about what?