Idaho Institute of Organizations and Leadership LLC

Welcome to the first IIOL Blog.  The focus of this Blog will be on the art and craft of followership.  Leadership is more than getting others to do your bidding. True leadership requires that you listen to others and understand (even if you don't agree with) those who criticize your ideas. This is where many inexperienced (and many experienced managers as well) go wrong.  They do not take criticism well.

It probably goes without saying that every organization needs followers. Why then has so little attention, recognition, or investment been given to their development?  Why isn’t more of an effort directed at developing this most critical part of an organization? 

In the 1970s, when the baby boomers were dominant workforce factors, there was a not-my-job mentality that seemed ingrained in the work force. Management responded with things like quality circles, self managed work teams, reward systems and much more. The book In Search of Excellence took the business community by storm and in its wake came any number of best management practices from the “One Minute Manager” to the now famous “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The term leader came to represent management, a much different approach that had earlier been encountered.

I think organizations need to get back to the original concept of leadership and i doing so, they will empower their team members to become world class followers.  

 

Ira Chaleff’s (1995) dynamic concept of followership is based on five unique behaviors: responsibility, service, challenge, transformation, and leaving (the courage to leave). 

• To assume responsibility not only for one’s own actions but for the organization happens through taking ownership.  Own the passion, the vision, and the warts that go along with all that can be good about an organization.
• Service means to assume additional responsibilities to help unburden the leader and serve the greater organization.  Service entails working on teams not flying solo, not seeking recognition for acts as an individual, rather doing what it takes (even if the job may not be the most glamorous or visible) to make things better.
• Challenge leadership to examine their actions. Harmony is important buy not at the expense of purpose, ethics, integrity, or trust.
• They assist in transformation by being a champion of change within the organization, supporting leadership in tough times and pursue personal transformation and not allow themselves to become professionally obsolete.
• By being true to ones own inner compass followers must have a moral obligation to protect themselves, the organizations, and their leaders.  They have a duty to not only do what they are asked by a duty to do what is right and a duty to know the difference. Sometimes that means having the courage to leave.

 

Yet many organizations want to control the bodies and minds of their employees, leaving all of the decision making up to the managers, regardless of their skill and knowledge in the area.  When a company requires 60 hour weeks, fires people for voicing their opinions, they are not setting a culture of followership. It is more like a cattle drive than it is a viable organization. 

How many of the followers in your organization are high performing?  I think there many employees who don't want that much control over their own destiny, because they really like being able to say, "Well, they did it to me." They're not going to want to take control of their own destiny, as it were, within the work environment either. 

Be the inventor or owner of our work; distinguish your work from your job. People that design and develop their work have a much larger stake in it than when they are told how and when to do things. 

More to come....