Followership – the new leadership?

“…leadership affects an organization’s success or failure by only 20 percent…followers can influence their organization’s effectiveness by as much as 80 percent.”

Robert Kelley, The Power of Followership (1992)

Google heavily favours Leadership

Given the weight of numbers involved in any organisation, you’d have thought that followership would be more important than leadership?

Not so − when I googled ‘Leadership’ it yielded 2,810m hits, whereas ‘Followership’ yielded only 1.5m hits. Does this mean that Leadership is 200x more important than Followership?

Historically, it has been the leaders who have garnered all the plaudits, who have written the books and who have led the research. However, that appears to be shifting; now, within the International Leadership Organization (ILA), there is The Followership Learning Community (FLC), which is “dedicated to the development of knowledge, competencies, and programs concerning the leader-follower relationship.” 

Followership has historically negative connotations

Historically, followership has been thought of as second-grade, of leadership poorly enacted or settling for a lesser position. In recent years though, attitudes have begun to change, perhaps helped by social media, where followership is a reciprocal, engaged and essential part of the relationship.

The key here though is active followership as opposed to passive followership.

Five different Followership styles

The opening quote to this blog was by Robert Kelley who is considered the modern-day guru of Followership. It was his research in the 1980s, surveying over 700 people from 20 industries, that laid the academic groundwork for the subject and the seminal book, The Power of Followership. Kelley then used data gathered from hosting workshops for leading corporations and his teachings at a post-graduate course on Followership, to build upon his initial findings.

Kelley identified two types of Active followers, two types of Passive followers and a type that sat in the middle, or fluctuated between states.

In Kelley’s own words, these five followership styles are:

Alienated: “capable but cynical, alienated followers sarcastically criticize the leader’s efforts, frequently hold back their own effort, or sink gradually into disgruntled acquiescence”

Conformist: “eager to accept orders and to willingly defer to a leader’s authority. They yield to the leader’s views and judgments”

Pragmatist: “gamespeople who manipulate others and the organization to their benefit”

Passive: “people who haven’t developed their followership skills…they basically do nothing”

Exemplary: “capable of and exercise independent and critical thinking apart from the leader or the group”

Conclusion

“Followers are not all the same. Some merely join, adding their names to the membership list and doing nothing more. Others collaborate with leaders to further some goal in which they believe − a social cause, a creative idea, a new product, a special service, a worthy person.”

The Power of Followership, Robert Kelley (1992)

So, whilst not everybody can be a great leader, many more have the opportunity to be great followers.

The averages suggested by Kelley, indicate roughly 1/3rd of people are passive followers, 1/3rd are active, and 1/3rd sit somewhere inbetween as pragmatists.  If an organisation can either hire people for their followership skills, or move them into the active bracket and hence tilt the percentages in their favour, this is going to have a greater knock-on impact on the effectiveness of the organisation than any number of individual leadership courses.

Next blog: The seven types of followers