Management education and training focus on "How to be a Good Leader."
An industry has sprung up around figuring out what leaders do and shouldn't do, why one type is better than another, who is this month's good or bad leader and manufacturing can't-miss recipes for success.
Resisting the temptation to be sign up for the latest "breakthrough" is easier if you keep a few things in mind.
First, not everyone can be a leader. For every leader, there must, by definition, be at least one follower, preferably more. Management training's goal is to turn everyone into leaders. If this goal is ever universally achieved, how will anything get done?
Note: Don't interpret this as meaning you shouldn't aspire to be a leader or won't someday be a leader. It is instead recognizing a truism missed by most organizations: there exists a leader/follower "balance" dictated by strategic needs, not by who's on the payroll at the moment.
Second, leaders also must be followers. Leaders who think they are not subject to second-guessing will be rudely surprised sooner than later. Every leader is responsible to somebody all the time, which is a very good definition for a follower.
Leaders are over-rated and leadership is always in short-supply. The traditional picture of a leader doesn't suit the team-orientation of today's knowledge-based businesses. In networked organizations, it's seldom clear who's leading and who's following and that's the way it should be. But to make that work, leadership is required from followers.
Being a follower isn't a bad thing. Get over it. Without good followers, no leader, no matter how good they are, can get the whole job done. Hierarchical reporting relationships, the stock-in-trade of industrial concerns and management instruction, are fading fast. Flatter structures where the lines between leaders and followers aren't bright or consistent work better.
Stop worrying about whether you'll be a "good leader" some day. Invest your energy instead in practicing good leadership and building your "followership value."
Keep in mind that leaders and leadership are two very different things.
Leadership should be practiced by everyone; it's all about passion, commitment and getting the right thing done at the right time. It’s not about who can talk the loudest or longest.
Leaders, especially good ones, may be different from the rest of us; they seem to have (and probably need) more of traits and characteristics like intelligence, high-energy, drive, determination and decisiveness.
Leaders sometimes start out "good," but turn "bad" over time. Others are bad from the get-go. Occasionally, leaders start out good and become even better. Followers have a hand in which of these happen and can reap the benefits or pay the price. Followers who practice good leadership can avoid bad leaders, get good leaders and make good leaders even better.
How to Keep a Good Thing from Going Bad
What kinds of "leading" should followers (team members) do? If you have to have a leader, how can you make sure your leader stays "good?" What do you do with a bad leader? Here are some tips and ideas.
Limit the Tenure of Leaders. Term-limits have benefits in politics; they also work in business. Teams don’t always require leaders, but if your team thinks it does, rotate the job. Having different leaders for different phases of a project is another approach worth considering.
Share the Power, Victories and Defeats. President Reagan kept a framed quotation on his Oval Office Desk as a daily reminder of what this meant, "There's no limit to what someone can do or where they can go if they don't mind who gets the credit." Use this quotation as a team motto and watch what happens.
Don’t let your Leader think he or she is a Celebrity. Don’t believe all the good (or bad) things that are being said or written; when was the last time you knew the newspaper got the whole story completely correct? Good followers know how to get and give the unvarnished truth (which is the best kind). And in case someone forgets, remind them, “It’s not personal, It’s just business.”
Get a life outside of business and don’t neglect it. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Laugh heartily and often at your mistakes.
Where’s this going?
Here’s something else to think about, “What management model will follow the current team-orientation buzz?” Teams evolved from hierarchical structures that decentralized decision-making. What will evolve from teams? Considering this question might be a source of competitive advantage.
A few academics and a growing number of practitioners think a "collaborative" model is the next step. If that's right (or even close), a sort of co-equal process of decision-making will develop where essentially there is no leader. And if there is no leader, then there aren't any followers either, right?
By the way, don't confuse collaboration with consensus. Consensus means everyone involved has to approve in order for something to be decided; the converse of that being that anyone can also veto anything.
Collaboration isn't that egalitarian. It emphasizes involvement over decision-making. Decisions come from iterative rounds of developing, analyzing, rejecting and re-formulating choices. A mechanism exists for up-or-down decisions to ensure the process doesn’t bog down, but is used sparingly if things are going well. Nike features this collaborative technique in its management development training.
To wrap up, leadership might be better viewed as something practiced by leaders and followers. Each will use different types of leadership, but neither, especially leaders, have a monopoly on it. No less important is the idea that leaders and followers are inseparable and indivisible.
Too much attention is lavished on turning everyone into a Good Leader. Don’t worry about the label you’re wearing today. Invest your valuable time and energy in practicing good leadership; that’s where you’ll build the value that lets you make meaningful contributions from which you will reap satisfying rewards.
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