Leadership: Another Look

Great leaders need great followers

Often, when we think about leadership, our mind immediately goes to the image of a great leader we have known, either personally or historically. The vast majority of research on leadership is driven by our respect and admiration for these individuals and billions have been spent on trying to make members of our organizations like them. It often doesn’t work, as pointed out by Jeffrey Pfeffer in his scathing attack on leadership development, Leadership BS. Even with all the science and the assessments and the 360 feedback, it seems that some folks just aren’t meant to become great leaders. It makes you think that perhaps the advocates of the “great man theory” of leadership were right after all; you are either born with the capability to lead or you aren’t. If this view was correct, all we would have to do is select the right people for the job of leading and we would see far greater success in achieving results on the bottom line. But that’s not the case. Robert Hogan, the leadership assessment expert, contends that about half the people we put into leadership positions fail.

A missing element in our thinking about leadership is the context in which leaders lead, and especially the role that others around them play. It’s hard to be a great leader without great followers and these days, without great bosses and colleagues. More than ever in our history, the breadth of what leaders are expected to know and manage is increasingly expansive. Leaders need help from experts and doers around them to keep up with the constant challenges they face. It’s quite enough for leaders to just do what is required to meet their own goals, but then there’s the additional work involved in helping others to meet theirs, whether it’s to complete critical tasks, lead change, develop people, serve customers, communicate new directives, find ways to cut costs, or work on various projects as members of teams or task forces.

We know, as per the Center for Creative Leadership, that the outcomes of good leadership are direction, alignment and commitment. But how are those outcomes produced? By definition, these outcomes require the engagement of others who must agree to the direction, align their goals and devote committed effort to achieving them. The leader can’t do these things all by himself or herself. The underlying theory behind leadership development is to enable leaders to more effectively mold direction, alignment and commitment from their direct reports, peers and others. Through clearer communication, more active listening, a heightened degree of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and more skill in influencing others, each leader should be more capable of aligning others behind their goals.

Yes, but there are several problems with this. First, others have goals too and some of them may not align with the goals of the leader. When different leaders need people to be aligned and committed to different priorities, the power of individual leadership breaks down. Second, crafting direction, alignment and commitment is fine but leaves out the question of capability. I can be completely aligned and committed to the direction set by the leader but still not able to succeed because I lack the skills, capabilities, authority or resources required by the task I have been assigned. Third, many complex tasks require learning as you go, meaning that the original direction may shift, necessitating that different people need to step forward to lead and that realignment and recommitment to a new task will be necessary. The ground upon which a leader stands is constantly shifting.

Therefore, the effort to develop better leadership in individuals is necessary but not sufficient. We need to pay equal attention to the context, the water within which the leader is swimming. As a leader reading this, ask yourself this question: “What would I like to see from the people around me that would make my job as a leader easier?” If you are like most leaders, you can quickly come up with a long list of things you would wish for: more attention to the goals you have set, letting you know if they are finding something challenging, taking more initiative, cooperating with their peers, solving problems themselves rather than bringing them to you, or perhaps just showing up and doing their jobs without complaining. Now ask yourself, “Have I called my people together to tell them what I would like from them and see if I can’t get them to agree?” If nothing else, this discussion would help you understand things from their perspective, allowing you to work with them to brainstorm solutions.

Now, imagine that instead of you attending leadership development sessions with other leaders that your team was given training on how to be a better team of followers. What if they learned the skills that would enable them to work with you more effectively to re-align their work with new directions and address the factors that are getting in the way of their authentic, whole-hearted commitment? What if they worked with peers from other parts of the organization to learn together how to reset their goals and efforts to tackle complex tasks that require interdepartmental cooperation? What if the people who design reward systems, performance review processes, and set the criteria for promotion worked with you and your team to understand what your team needs from them to be able to do the things you and they would like to be able to do?

There is an element of leadership that remains with you, the individual leader, and that is displaying the courage to address things that are holding you and your people back. This is true at every level, whether you are the CEO, a C-Suite leader or even a first-line supervisor. The systems, policies, and managerial beliefs that shape people’s behavior won’t change by themselves. A leader has to question them.

It has been said that the complexity of our world is putting pressure on leaders to think more strategically, while delegating more of the day-to-day work to their subordinates. Thinking strategically about what will make your subordinates better followers, individually and collectively, is one of the most important things you can do to multiply your influence as a leader. If you are in a position of leadership that allows you to think about this from an organizational perspective, so much the better.

Great leaders need great followers. Start thinking about what you can do to make yours better.