BE different

Why followership is more important than leadership.

 Ask yourself two simple questions:

1. If a leader believes they have “leadership” skills but the followers do not; does the leader actually have leadership skills?

2. If a leader does not believe they have “leadership” skills but the followers do; then does the leader have “leadership” skills?

 

Executive Summary

As a sociologist I have never been happy with the concept of “leadership” when used in organisational behaviour. “Leadership” is clearly an “emergent social property”, it arises out of leaders and followers interacting. Many books on leadership assume that it is a quality belonging to the individual leader; this is probably a fruitless exercise as you cannot take the concept out of the social context.

This article suggests that to understand “leadership” by looking at leaders is a mirage because “leadership”, as a quality, exists in the minds of the followers. Clearly the behaviour of the manager or leader has an impact on the follower’s perception but it is not simply cause and effect. The leader’s behaviour is filtered by the experience, beliefs and expectations of the followers and it is the follower’s perception that is paramount. In addition, when it comes to organisational behaviour, the most important measure is the performance of the team.

In society and throughout history leaders were not “trained” but “followers” are, or at least they are “conditioned”.

 Ask yourself two simple questions:

1. If a leader believes they have “leadership” skills but the followers do not; does the leader actually have leadership skills?
2. If a leader does not believe they have “leadership” skills but the followers do; then does the leader have “leadership” skills?

Clearly the answer must be 2.

 

The Leadership Mirage

We make the assumption that “leadership” is a “quality” that belongs to the leader or manager but in fact it is derived from the beliefs, experience, perception and behaviour of the team and is reflected back onto the so called leader – a mirage.

“Leadership” training often starts with a discussion of “great” political or organisational leaders. Historically, and in society generally, few “leaders” have been trained in leadership and the so called “qualities” they have been attributed with often turn out to be delusions, qualities that only exist in the minds of the followers, very often because followers have a need or desire to believe.

I use the term “mirage” because we tend to look at leadership in the wrong direction. In recent years, in the world political setting, decisions seem to have been made based on the “great man” or “heroic leadership” concept. In the Middle East there seems to be the belief that if the “leader” or “despotic dictator” were removed then peace, democracy and tranquillity would prevail. The war in Iraq would be over once Saddam Hussein was removed? The Arab Spring is another example of this delusion or mirage. We should see “leadership” from the point of view of the followers and then we would concentrate more on the follower’s perception and not on the so called qualities of the leader, whatever they are.

In the political context more effort should be made to change the minds of the followers than trying to get rid of a leader who will, in all probability, just be replaced by a mere replica. Political leaders and those close to them have always known that to maintain the delusion of “leadership” they have to control the ideas, fears and beliefs of the followers. Political leaders throughout history have done this by censorship, propaganda, military control and at best by “public relations”. It is clear that in society leaders are not “trained” but their followers are!

It has always been known in the military and in bureaucracies that controlling the minds of the followers creates “leadership”; followers have been managed, controlled, coerced and conditioned to obey their superiors. In a bureaucracy there are negative consequences of not obeying your manager, you can lose your job, miss out on promotion, be given a poor appraisal and so on and in the military, especially in the First World War, not obeying your leader often meant you were shot.

In the context of Organisational Behaviour the main concern and focus is on the behaviour and performance of the team not necessarily the team leader. It should always be remembered that the manager’s behaviour is filtered and interpreted by the team. In one situation the manager’s behaviour may be interpreted as “leadership” in another situation is may be interpreted as a weakness, even if it is exactly the same behaviour.

I am not advocating what the military have always done and that is train the troops, the followers, to obey. What I am suggesting is that the manager should find out the team’s perception of them as a manager, their present “management style”. Do not ask the manager about their management style but ask the team members because it is the team members perception that determines their behaviour and performance.

To locate the “management style” of any manager simply means asking the team members the basis for their manager’s authority. I have located 60 types of authority split into 12 main headings. One third are likely to motivate and engage employees, one third tend to be useful for a manager to have but do not motivate or demotivate and under certain circumstances the final third can demotivate team members. Every manager will have a profile based on the 12 headings.

It is apparent when considering these 12 headings that “effective leadership” or the designation of “leadership” may be dependent on the social situation. “Leadership” may well be a different management style in the military compared with commercial organisations, between team leaders in a company and the directors of that company, between a bureaucracy and the social services; indeed “leadership” may be different in different societies. It is for this reason that I cannot accept the term “authentic leadership”. There is no essential or correct definition of “leadership”; in the philosophy of science this is called “conceptual essentialism” and is not what scientists do. When “leadership” is defined in a flexible way depending on your research purposes this is referred to as “conceptual nominalism” – this is what research scientists do.

If you are coaching or training managers in “leadership”, however you define it, the coaching or training is considerably more effective if the manager (and the coach) know how the team members perceive their managers “style of managing”. The manager can see their profile and through training or coaching decide what they want to do more of, less of or keep the same. If the manager wishes to change the team’s perception of them, let us say they are perceived as micro managing, then the manager should discuss with team members their desire to change their behaviour, in this case be less controlling. There are plenty of cases of managers changing their behaviour, after coaching or training, and the team members not changing their perception so that the manager returns to their old behaviour pushed into it by the team’s perception and expectations; involving the team reduces this possibility.

You may feel that looking at “followers” as opposed to “leaders” to understand “leadership” is a matter of emphasis but his matter of emphasis has a profound effect on outcomes. If we focused on the followers the Gulf War may not have happened, certainly the post war response would have been different. The so called “Arab Spring” would be seen as merely a “circulation of elites” and not a sudden transformation of a country’s culture. Looking at the perception of followers would mean that leadership training would be much more effective and placed in the organisational culture and context. Looking at the follower’s perception would explain why a successful leader in one company might fail to be an “effective leader” in another.

Looking at leaders to understand leadership is a mirage, a mirage generated by the views, experience and behaviour of the team.

Geoff Ribbens

business-enlightenment.com