“… it’s long overdue for academics and practitioners to adopt a more expansive view of leadership—one that sees leaders and followers as inseparable, indivisible, and impossible to conceive the one without the other.” ~ Barbara Kellerman Harvard Business Review Dec. 2007
https://hbr.org/2007/12/what-every-leader-needs-to-know-about-followers
I have finally found a resource that mirrors my current attitude and position concerning followers and leaders. Give it a read it is very enlightening. In her article she also notes that there is a boat load of info and resources concerning leadership but, “Good follower-ship, by contrast, is the stuff of nearly nothing.”
In my last post I used Homer’s Odyssey as a frame work to relay where I was in my personal research of looking for quality information on ‘followers’ vs. leaders.
I ended the post with a picture of looking out into a mountain landscape, preparing to continue on in my personal journey. Hopefully creating a mind picture for you of one looking ahead and wondering where we may end up as we traverse the ups and downs, mountains and valleys, of learning about followers and leaders.
In the post I used some Greek words, mashed up, that mean leader and follower, to represent the two different ‘species’ I’ve been looking for. Leaders, I’ve found, are easily identifiable as they are the ones who get all of the attention of the self-improvement industry. With scores of books, videos, seminars and coaching businesses all offered specifically to learn… and this is a point of discussion today… how to improve from being a follower into a position of a leader.
With all of the information I have read so far the follower is always cataloged in the ‘poor’ column and you are to use the book, video or coaching… to move yourself into the ‘good’ column of leadership.
I haven’t found any positive reason why anyone would want to be considered a follower.
I received a comment from one of my subscribers who relayed he wasn’t quite following where I was going after reading my last few articles.
I thought it was perfect. It caused in him to… stop & think… and to create a response, and he articulated it perfectly with this,
“The ideas are not well linked, like some of the detail that is in your head is not getting us on the trail with you and we are left behind as you ramble around looking for the correct way thru.”
Those words are exactly what I am doing. It made me laugh, because I knew that was what I was doing. Because that is where I am in my thinking. It was also timely, a little quick actually, because I planned to explain in this weeks post “where I’m coming from, and where I’m going to.”
So in the spirit of following and leading, to you, my loyal readers… who are FOLLOWING my weekly articles I will, as the LEADER of the discussion… try to articulate my vision in a clear and forthright manner.
- davebosquez.com is a place where I try to capture my thoughts as they happen.
- My original goal for my website was to research “success” and capture my experience as I went along.
- My life goal is to become a “successful” author, davebosquez.com provides a training ground where I can learn how to articulate and express my thoughts on varying topics of interest.
- As the thoughts occur they may be realized as a one-off article, a short story or a loosely stringed together “series” on any given topic such as this last months worth of “follower-ship vs. leadership” articles.
- And all of this is my attempt at getting to know myself, who I am, what I am, what I believe, what I stand for, and what can my personal character attain to… versus what my corrupted nature would have me be yoked to.
On Sunday March 1st at 12:37pm I was contemplating my next book purchases, for my personal library after I had completed work on my newest book ‘The Definite Dad’ (currently on Amazon, I will be announcing it in the near future via social media, just have a few things to finish up before the ‘actual’ launch)
The two books were ‘The Warrior Ethos’ by Steven Pressfield and Hagakure: The way of the Samurai.
My mind started to fire up and think about my self perception, my self image, “Do I have a warrior type image inside me or am I just a follower… one of the general herd?”
My thoughts then went to leaders and followers. With the emphasis on ‘followers.’ When I went to research books for followers there were none. The term “follower-ship” did pop up though, as “a new field of study” and I thought that was interesting. How can you have a whole industry of self improvement focused on being a leader but have no information on how to be a great follower? It’s not like ‘poof!’ and you’re a leader running a fortune five hundred company overnight… you started somewhere, you worked your way towards that position, you were following someone else, and you were learning all along the way.
As I put my articles and books out there I have found I have one overriding goal and that is to get you to… stop and think… I’ve been finding I am able to meet that goal. Feels good.
As I learn, I hope you learn, with the main goal of learning more about who we are individually.
Looking out into the near future I will be working on getting The Definite Dad project up and going and I have a couple of more ideas on followers and leaders that I would like to write about, and I will be using Ms. Kellermans article as a sort of trail head… a place to start from as we head out into the mountains in hopes of finding some more golden nuggets of wisdom… so put your walking shoes, and thinking caps… on.
Paul says
Good one Dave! My favorite Mentor I ever had stopped me one day and said “Do you know why I consider you a good manager? I said, “No, why”? He replied, “Your one of the best students I have ever had because you are willing to be taught. Also, you are willing to challenge me with difficult questions which tells me you are paying attention, thinking of possible problems we may encounter, gathering different viewpoints from your team and bringing solutions forward we will need to implement.” I have often thought about that.