Dr David Cliff explores the relationship between leadership and followership.
Nigel Farage recently described himself in characteristically unequivocal terms as a leader rather than a follower. Whatever one thinks of his politics, the distinction is interesting. Relatively few people define themselves so explicitly through leadership.
We prize leadership culturally, write libraries about it and spend considerable sums developing it. Yet leadership makes little sense without followership.
From an evolutionary perspective, both appear to have developed as solutions to the problem of human collaboration. Groups need to coordinate movement, resources, defence, decision-making and collective effort. Sometimes somebody has to indicate direction; others must decide whether that direction deserves support.
Leadership therefore involves more than occupying a senior position. It includes accepting responsibility, exercising judgement, influencing others and assuming an appropriate degree of authority. That authority may arise from expertise, organisational position, social convention, qualification, experience or, importantly, from the willingness of others to recognise it.
This distinction matters because organisations sometimes promote people into leadership without creating leaders. They may instead produce highly competent organisational stewards: people who administer policy, maintain compliance and transmit decisions made elsewhere. All are necessary activities, but they are not necessarily leadership.
Leadership is partly behavioural, but it can also become an identity: an internal willingness to step forward, tolerate uncertainty and accept responsibility for shaping events.
Followership deserves equal attention. It should not be confused with inferiority, submissiveness or lack of capability. Good followership is an adaptive choice. Most collaborative systems require people who can contribute expertise, exercise judgement and coordinate their effort around an agreed direction without continually needing to become the person defining that direction.
Indeed, contemporary followership research suggests that people move between leading and following according to circumstances rather than belonging permanently to one category.
This creates an important challenge for leaders.
Leadership development often concentrates upon the leader: confidence, authority, influence, strategic thinking and personal presence. Yet effective leadership also requires an understanding of what followers need.
People are more likely to offer discretionary effort when they experience clarity, belonging, purpose and congruence between what leaders say and what they actually do. They need sufficient confidence in those providing direction to commit some of their own autonomy to the collective enterprise.
This is where personality and communication matter. Two leaders can advocate broadly similar policies yet generate dramatically different levels of identification and confidence. Leadership is therefore never solely about the proposition; it is also about the relationship created around it.
Perhaps aspiring leaders should spend rather less time asking, “How do I become a better leader?” and rather more asking, “What would make somebody choose to follow me?”
Leadership without followership is merely intention. The real test of leadership is whether people freely lend their effort, judgement and commitment to the direction being offered.
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