What Leaders Need
bout der ry Lea s to Know A t Eve
Wha
Need
rs e w llo Fo by Barbara Kellerman
84 Harvard Business Review
1717 Kellerman.indd 84
|
December 2007
|
There is no leader without at least one follower – that’s obvious. Yet the modern leadership industry, now a quarter-century old, is built on the proposition that leaders matter a great deal and followers hardly at all.
Good leadership is the stuff of countless courses, workshops, books, and articles. Everyone wants to understand just what makes leaders tick – the charismatic ones, the retiring ones, and even the crooked ones. Good followership, by contrast, is the stuff of nearly nothing. Most of the limited research and writing on subordinates has tended to either explain their behavior in the context of leaders’ development rather than followers’ or mistakenly assume that followers are amorphous, all one and the same. As a result, we hardly notice, for example, that followers who tag along mindlessly are altogether different from those who are deeply devoted.
In reality, the distinctions among followers in groups and organizations are every bit as consequential as those among
Jill Calder
The distinctions among followers are every bit as consequential as those among leaders – and have critical implications for how managers should manage.
hbr.org
11/1/07 8:43:24 PM
1717 Kellerman.indd 85
11/1/07 8:43:42 PM
What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers
leaders. This is particularly true in business: In an era of flatter, networked organizations and cross-cutting teams of knowledge workers, it’s not always obvious who exactly is following (or, for that matter, who exactly is leading) and how they are going about it. Reporting relationships are shifting, and new talent-management tools and approaches are constantly emerging. A confluence of changes – cultural and technological ones in particular – have influenced what subordinates want and how
Wha
Need
rs e w llo Fo by Barbara Kellerman
84 Harvard Business Review
1717 Kellerman.indd 84
|
December 2007
|
There is no leader without at least one follower – that’s obvious. Yet the modern leadership industry, now a quarter-century old, is built on the proposition that leaders matter a great deal and followers hardly at all.
Good leadership is the stuff of countless courses, workshops, books, and articles. Everyone wants to understand just what makes leaders tick – the charismatic ones, the retiring ones, and even the crooked ones. Good followership, by contrast, is the stuff of nearly nothing. Most of the limited research and writing on subordinates has tended to either explain their behavior in the context of leaders’ development rather than followers’ or mistakenly assume that followers are amorphous, all one and the same. As a result, we hardly notice, for example, that followers who tag along mindlessly are altogether different from those who are deeply devoted.
In reality, the distinctions among followers in groups and organizations are every bit as consequential as those among
Jill Calder
The distinctions among followers are every bit as consequential as those among leaders – and have critical implications for how managers should manage.
hbr.org
11/1/07 8:43:24 PM
1717 Kellerman.indd 85
11/1/07 8:43:42 PM
What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers
leaders. This is particularly true in business: In an era of flatter, networked organizations and cross-cutting teams of knowledge workers, it’s not always obvious who exactly is following (or, for that matter, who exactly is leading) and how they are going about it. Reporting relationships are shifting, and new talent-management tools and approaches are constantly emerging. A confluence of changes – cultural and technological ones in particular – have influenced what subordinates want and how