Leadership and followership form a dynamic dance.
Welcome to our Followership blog series. As an organization, we have always focused on what it takes to be a great leader, but even great leaders must sometimes follow. That’s why we’re excited to hear from Sharna Fabiano—a coach, educator and followership expert—about what it takes to succeed as a follower and how mastering followership skills can help you flourish in team settings.
While leadership is a much-celebrated, much-discussed subject, followership is an idea rarely thought of at all, much less thought of as valuable. We frequently operate within hierarchical settings (school, work, civic life, etc.) where leaders are placed above followers, and we therefore tend to give outsized importance to the leadership role while overlooking the importance of effective followership.
In fact, the very idea of being a follower is often perceived as a bad thing, and as a result, expectations of people in supporting roles generally fall short of what they could and should be. This type of thinking hurts both leaders and followers. After all, if your role as a follower isn’t valued, what’s the point of extending the effort? And since we exaggerate our expectations of leaders, we place a disproportionate share of the responsibility to succeed on their shoulders.
We know the best leaders articulate and drive forward big ideas, values and visions for the future. What if we stopped thinking of followers as obedient, passive and inferior to the leader, and started seeing them as attentive, supportive, and detail-oriented?
Especially in team settings, thinking of “followership” as a companion to leadership gives us a useful way to understand how we both support and are supported by our teammates. We’re all leaders of our own lives, but when we work together in teams, we can’t all lead at the same time; we have to take turns. When you take your turn to lead, the other members of your team aren’t less important. They’re just playing a different role—the followership role.
The followership role matters for so many reasons. How can you share your big ideas if no one is listening? How do you know if a plan will work if no one asks questions? And how will any project succeed if no one takes care of the details?
Active listening, asking questions and taking care of the details are just a few of the skills capable followers practice to support their team’s shared goals. If you are in charge of a meeting, you need everyone else in the room to do these things. And when someone else takes over as a leader, you’ll need to switch roles and be able to do them too. Collaborators who can easily switch between leader and follower roles form stronger teams and create more successful projects.
Right now, because of COVID-19, many of you are learning remotely. How can you practice both leading and following in this less than ideal situation? Let’s take a closer look.
As a student, you are primarily in a following role, but that doesn’t mean your ideas or your interests don’t matter. One of your teacher’s primary responsibilities is to provide a useful framework for your learning. This might include a schedule, assignments, deadlines and assessments—all essential leadership actions. But it’s how you respond to that framework that really makes the difference.
How you learn is largely under your control, especially in a remote environment. Are you listening with focus and with the intent to understand? Are you staying curious and looking for details that interest you? Are you asking questions when things don’t make sense? These things are all examples of strong followership, and they can help you feel more connected to your classmates and your teachers even through the screen. They can also prepare you for role switching when you start working with your peers.
In fact, chances are good that you’re taking turns leading and following in some ways already. When you state your own ideas, you’re the leader. When you listen to other people, you’re the follower. But that’s just the beginning. What about helping a partner with something you happen to be good at? Or asking them for help with something that they’re good at?
Some things are harder to do through the screen than they are in person, so practicing patience and flexibility—two other key followership skills—are really important right now. If something takes longer than you think it should, take a few deep breaths and be patient with yourself and with other people. If you can’t do something the way you normally would, use your creativity to consider other ways of accomplishing the same task. Lastly, you can help yourself and your classmates get through this stressful time by remembering that everyone is doing the best they can, including you!
Quick summary:
Take turns leading and following
To start recognizing the follower role, ask yourself where you can be more supportive, either at home, in class, online or somewhere else. Notice where you naturally tend to lead and where you’re more inclined to follow.
Listen, Ask questions and stay interested
The follower role is about expressing yourself within a structure that someone else has provided. Believe it or not, we are actually more creative when we have some external guidelines in place.
Practice patience and flexibility
Remote learning is a huge experiment for everyone. Expect things to be a little (or a lot) disorganized, and use your creativity to help make things work anyway.
By Sharna Fabiano
Sharna is an artist, educator and certified coach who trains teams and organizations on leadership and followership. She has also established two dance schools and directed her own performing company. She incorporates her insights from the world of social dance into her work on the leadership/followership dynamic. Learn more by visiting her website.