Apostate Followers Cannot Make Good Leaders The link between leadership and performance is widely understood and accepted. Improving leadership improves management and raises the probabilities of better performance. That there is change of leaders when a system is slipping confirms the importance placed on leadership. The flip side of leadership is followership. It stands to reason that if leadership is important to performance, followership must have something to do with it too. But curiously, followership gets only a small fraction of the airtime that leadership does. Followership is a straightforward concept. It is the ability to take direction well, to get in line behind a program, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you. It gets a bit of a bad rap! How well the followers follow is probably just as important to a system success as how well the leaders lead. The label “excellent follower” can be a backhanded compliment. It is not a reputation you necessarily want if you are seeking higher office. There is something of a stigma to followership skills. Pity because the practical reality is one does not reach progressively more responsible leadership positions without demonstrating an ability to follow and function effectively in a group. The fact is that in a system everybody is both a leader and a follower depending on the circumstances which just adds to the paradox of the followership stigma. Followership may take the backseat to leadership but it matters: it matters a lot! Quite simply, where followership is a failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed to get done. Followership problems manifest themselves in poor ethic, bad morale, and distraction from goals. At the extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin and the consequence is always the same: a system confusion and poor performance. Thus, who then is to blame when a system fails? Are those who fall out of the system better than those still in it? Do those who are no more favored, really tell the people the truth? Is the system of divide and rule preached by followers who refuse to follow the course of their leaders the best? Until we answer the above questions, we will keep being carried away by sentiments and sympathy, a situation that keep those who feel too big to be followers, making stories that have no bases. If we cannot ask people to give account of their stewardship as followers, they will fail us as leaders. Why will people keep telling us and feeling they will do better as leaders, when as followers, they have nothing to show? How well did they as followers, keep leaders at their best? A cabal is a team, once in, you’re getting out, is not to tell the truth about the cabal, but to deceive the people to your own interest. Let us face the truth, how many of us are ready to sacrifice for our society. What have we done to show we are ready for that sacrifice?
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 09:33:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015