Leadership receives a great deal of attention. Followership receives far less.
That has always struck me as odd, because every effective team depends on both.
One of my speaking themes takes lessons about leadership and followship from military experience into the boardroom. The point is not that business should operate like the military. It should not. The environments, responsibilities and consequences are different.
The useful lesson is simpler: a team does not become effective because one person at the top is a good leader. It becomes effective when people throughout the team understand responsibility, communication, trust and when to lead or follow.
Followership is not passive obedience
The word follower can sound passive. Good followership is anything but passive.
A strong follower pays attention, understands the intent, thinks about the situation, takes responsibility for their part and raises concerns when something does not make sense.
They do not wait to be told every small detail.
They also do not confuse having an opinion with needing to win every argument.
Good followership requires judgement.
Understand the direction, not just the task
People perform better when they understand why something matters.
If someone is only given a task, they can complete the task exactly as instructed even when circumstances change and the original instruction no longer makes sense.
If they understand the intended outcome, they have more chance of adapting intelligently.
This is equally important in business.
A team member who understands the purpose behind a customer promise, a deadline or a commercial priority is better equipped to make a useful decision when the manager is not available.
Challenge can be part of good followership
Good teams need people who are willing to speak up.
If the plan contains a risk, the information is incomplete or somebody closer to the work can see a problem, silence is not necessarily loyalty.
Constructive challenge can be a form of responsibility.
The key word is constructive.
Challenge should improve the decision, not become a performance of disagreement. Bring evidence. Explain the concern. Offer another perspective. Ask the question that needs to be asked.
Leaders have a responsibility here too. If every challenge is treated as disloyalty, people quickly learn to keep quiet.
Once the decision is made, the team needs alignment
A healthy team can disagree before a decision and still support the decision afterwards.
That does not mean pretending you originally agreed. It means recognising that endless re-arguing can make execution impossible.
There are exceptions, particularly where ethics, legality, safety or serious risk are involved. But in normal business decisions, a team eventually has to move.
Good followership is capable of saying, “I raised my concern, the decision has been made, and now I will do my part properly.”
Followers also need accountability
It is easy to attribute every team problem to leadership.
Sometimes leadership is the problem. Sometimes it is not.
Team members also have responsibilities. To prepare. To communicate early. To meet commitments. To ask for help before a deadline is missed. To own mistakes. To avoid leaving every difficult decision for somebody else.
An organisation where everybody waits for the leader to solve everything becomes slow and fragile.
Leadership and followership can change by situation
Job titles matter, but expertise matters too.
A senior leader may be in overall charge and still need to follow the judgement of a specialist who understands a technical issue better than they do.
A project manager may lead the project but follow the finance lead on a financial-control decision.
A business owner may set the strategic direction and still need to listen carefully to the person closest to the customer.
Mature teams can move between leading and following without treating either role as a loss of status.
What leaders can do to create better followership
You cannot demand thoughtful followership while creating a culture where thinking is punished.
Leaders can help by:
- making the intent and priorities clear;
- giving people appropriate authority as well as responsibility;
- inviting challenge before decisions are final;
- responding to bad news without immediately shooting the messenger;
- holding people accountable for commitments;
- avoiding unnecessary rescue when someone is capable of solving the problem themselves.
This is not about giving away leadership. It is about building capability around it.
What followers can do
Equally, team members can ask themselves:
- Do I understand the outcome, or only my task?
- Am I raising concerns early enough?
- When I challenge, am I bringing useful evidence?
- Do I take ownership, or wait to be rescued?
- Can I support a decision once the debate is finished?
- Where should I step forward and lead because I have the relevant knowledge?
Why this matters in growing businesses
As a business grows, the owner cannot remain the source of every answer.
The organisation needs people who can think, act and take responsibility within clear boundaries.
That is one reason followership matters so much to me. It is not a lesser version of leadership. It is part of how leadership becomes distributed through a capable team.
Conclusion
Strong organisations need leaders worth following and followers willing to think.
Practical takeaway: In your next team discussion, ask whether people understand the intent well enough to make a good decision when the leader is not in the room.
If you are developing your leadership, team or decision-making approach, see Executive Coaching.
Archive note: This Insight draws on themes from my Leadership and Followship speaking material, informed by military and business experience, and has been edited and expanded for the current website.