Why We Win - Followership and Leadership Strategies for Success!

Mark Adams
March 2, 2010 | COMMENTS

Name one person who is a leader all day, every day…

You probably said the President or a religious leader or maybe even your boss. All good choices but all actually follow part or much of the time.

The President of the United States is called the leader of the free world but the Secret Service tells him where to go and how to get there. The congress can tell him/her yes or no depending on their votes on legislation. Average citizens lead with their votes before a president can take office. Presidents and elected officials chase votes during the elections. This is hardly an example of an all day every day leadership position and based on events around the world the title “leader of the free world” might be a little broad and misleading.

All religions have a “leader” on this earth but all of these leaders and their followers follow the teachings from divine entities and divinely inspired texts. Hindus read and obey the teachings of the Vedas, Buddhists the Tripitaka which is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, Judaism is based on the Torah with Abraham and Moses as leaders and role models, Islam has the Qur’an based on the peaceful teachings of Mohammad and Christians follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Bible.

For some reason when it comes to religion it seems OK to follow. Why does that change when we execute our professional and personal strategies?

Your boss answers to her boss and everyone answers to the board who is elected by shareholders, etc. Who is really in charge here?

In the United States alone companies invested over $800,000,000.00 in 2007 on leadership training according to International Data Corporation (IDC). IDC research estimates that about 11% of all workers work in roles where their leadership roles are critical to organizational development. If my grade school math is correct then that means that 89% of all workers are more followers than professionally trained leaders.

Yet, when I ask my CU audiences how many of them have experienced some form of professional leadership training, 99% of my participants raise their hands and the 1% that doesn’t is probably not following directions. But, when I ask the same people how many of them have experienced followership training, maybe one hand reluctantly goes up accompanied by a look of uncertainty.

When I Googled ‘leadership books’, 36,000,000 results were found. But, when I Googled ‘followership books’, only 155,000 results were found. In other words, you have a 99.6% better chance of finding information on how to be a good leader versus how to be a good follower even though most of us follow most of the time. When I Googled the word ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ I found that there was a twenty two times greater chance of finding information on the word ‘leader’ than ‘follower’!

I then turned to my grade school educational “GO TO” text, The Webster’s Dictionary to better define the following words:

The Definition of a ‘Leader’: A horse placed in advance of the other horses of a team.
The Definition of ‘Leadership’: The quality of character and personality giving a person the ability to gain the confidence of and lead others.

The Definition of a ‘Follower’: one who follows, a pursuer, a disciple.
The Definition of ‘Followership’: Not listed as a word in Webster’s Dictionary.

I am now forced to make up my own definition of ‘Followership’ so here goes:
Followership: The quality of character and personality giving a person the confidence to make things happen by following instructions while leading by example.

How’s that? That is only my definition but it ain’t bad is it?

So, while I make my living educating CU leaders on leadership strategies and tactics, I think it is now time to concentrate on those who really do the work. It is time to focus on followers but first why do people follow?

Remember earlier when I pointed out our willingness to follow religious teachings and leaders? Why is that such acceptable behavior? Simple, we follow because we believe! We believe in the cause, the teachings, and the rewards. We believe in the moral compass that gives us direction every day.

I asked my team members from my 1989 District Championship team a simple question, “Why did we win?”

Their answers were most interesting and one in particular pretty much defined all of the answers into one response: “We were successful as a team because you set expectations early and never swayed from those and consistency and honesty were big. We had role players and each of us knew what we were there for and you identified that early in the season.You were honest and you had high expectations and you held us accountable on and off the court. I was 110% committed to your direction.”

This young man was obviously a happy follower. He is in fact, more of a leader of young people today as a teacher and coach but he has shared with me many times the values he learned and experienced as a follower on our team.

I have come to the unscientific conclusion that those who are willing to be mentored are more likely to exercise the, “qualities of character and personality giving a person the confidence to make things happen by following instructions while leading by example.”

I also watched him develop over time, “the qualities of character and personality giving a person the ability to gain the confidence of and lead others.”

This young man fit both definitions perfectly at different times of his personal and professional development.

While I could spend hours and hours talking about effective leadership and followership strategies I will leave you with the most important followership strategy of all…listening!

In order to be a good follower you must first develop the ability to be a good listener. Listening involves tapping into a quality that if executed properly will drive greater self-confidence based on your learned skills and superior knowledge of a topic or activity.

Recently, I met with a mentor of mine who also happens to be the person who decides if I am good enough to appear as a college basketball analyst on ESPN. He is a mentor who invests time with me and I take my role seriously as a listener when ever we sit down and review my performance. In our last meeting he and I reviewed one of my actual game tapes.

From that exchange I sent him the following recap of our discussion:

Dear Dan,

Thanks again for your time. I wanted to share with you my take aways from our meeting and what I plan to enhance and work on as a professional college basketball analyst for the 2009-10 season as follows:
1. Pace and Range of Tone: I get it and can do it and will execute. I do this when I speak and can make this transition easily. I need to balance my passion with a slower pace at times. You liked the pace and tone of many of my second half comments and I will be more consistent with that delivery from start to finish in 2009-10.
2. Open: What is the headline? You liked my headline for the game and also seemed positive about how I kept re-introducing that headline in my comments throughout the game.
3. Forecast: This seemed to be your strongest positive reaction to my analysis. I will continue to prepare as I have as I believe that my talent as a 'maximizer' (see Gallup Strengths Analysis in your book) is where this talent shines the most. I will continue to work to guide the viewer’s eye to forecasted action.
Those are my emphasis points for this coming season. Again, my goal is to be ESPN's mid-major GO-TO-GUY. I know that I can reach that goal with my effort and your continued investment of time and mentorship in me and my career goals.

Thanks Dan for reviewing my thoughts and I am most excited about the upcoming season!

Enthusiastically,
Mark E. Adams

Dan is an effective leader who has the qualities of character and personality to gain the confidence of and lead others, in this case lead me. Because of this relationship and mentoring I have gained confidence and now I make things happen by following instructions while leading by example.

The results speak for themselves, ESPN is the worldwide leader in sports and I get to pursue my passion as a college basketball analyst while learning from the best!

Being a good follower by being a good listener is one reason, WHY WE WIN individually and collectively in the credit union movement!

Mark Adams is President of Enthusi Adams. Reprinted with permission.