The Followership Centre

We know that all situations are the same and therefore not all leader-follower relationships are the same. What we seem to lack are simple rules of thumbs for working out what (and what not) to do when. I have a fondness for the Cynefin framework.

The Cynefin framework maps out the world into four different spaces:

• Simple
• Complicated
• Complex
• Chaotic.

What do you do depends on the kind of domain that you are in. Back in 2007, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making by Dave Snowden & Mary Boone mapped out the different roles that leaders can play effectively in each domain. I’d like to reflect what the relevant followership behaviours might be in each situation.

Simple: In the simple domain, one thing invariably leads to the next. The leader ensures that the correct processes are in place and the follower, well, follows them. Too easy. However the simple domain lies next to chaos for a reason: routine can lead to complacency. Things may not be as simple as we think. Therefore the role of the follower is to pay attention and to keep things fresh. If you are in a routine role, what have you noticed recently?

Complicated: In the complicated domain, there is a cause and effect but they may be tangled up and require expert investigation. Sometimes this works well. One role for a follower is be able to identify and engage the relevant expert (which may be the follower herself). However experts tend to fixate on their area of expertise and may not be open to innovative ideas. It may require a willingness on the part of followers to provide insights in an appropriate manner.

Complex: In the complex domain, there are many interacting factors rather than clear causes and effects. Here the relationship between leaders and followers becomes more fluid and both need to be prepared to shift between and even share roles as the situation emerges.

Chaos: In chaos, all you can do is act and then see whether your actions work or not. If the leader is strong and effective then the follower is best off following. If the leader is weak then the follower must decide whether to strengthen them or remove their support.  The latter course of action requires someone to fill that power vacuum as quickly as possible. It is dangerous (the whole system might collapse) but may be necessary if the alternative is disaster.

The challenge for followers is to understand the domain that we are in and to be both willing and able to modify our behaviour accordingly. This is actually a lot of work. We must pay attention to our surroundings and our fellow followers. The further we move in complexity, the more we need to collaborate with others to make sense of what is going on. We must also know ourselves and our leaders. How do we cope with routine and uncertainty? And what happens when we mistake the one for the other?

None of this easy, but as this blog continually notes, being a follower is not an easy role.

How have you coped with these different contexts?

Many thanks to everyone who participated in this session. Lots of recurring themes and ideas around bravery, mindfulness and status…

Many thanks to all the attendees at today’s Followership World Cafe. We began with some mindmapping (see below) and then opened out the discussion to include some other things.

• The models around followership styles from Kelley & Chaleff as well as Kelley’s seven paths to followership.
• The Cynefin framework popped up again.
• We ended with some discussion on mindfulness and self-awareness.

See you in Melbourne.

The World Cafe is an interesting format and (along with Open Space) well-suited to exploring issues like followership. Today, I found myself with two venues and a plane ticket so I have decided to run a couple of world cafe events. One of which will be on, well, I hope by now it’s obvious. Sadly my partner-in-virtue, Anne Murphy, will be in Denver (where the conflicts of the world – of which there seem to be more than the usual number at present – will be resolved).

Book a ticket, tell your friends, rock up. What could be simpler?

Sydney: Monday, 4 April 14:00-16:00 Book now.
Melbourne: Monday, 11 April 14:00-16:00 Book now.

Warren Bennis says the most important characteristics of followers are telling the truth and voicing dissent. Professor Bennis recognises that in speaking up a follower often puts her job on the line, it’s not a good place to start. While I would like to be a courageous follower and tell the Emperor when he has no clothes, I can’t afford that action to be at the expense of my own well-being and comfortable employment.

I notice when I transpose the theory about leaders and followers into the everyday of managers and employees, the theory gets exponentially more difficult to enact. In the office it takes so little to trigger boss-induced anxiety – a sigh, a tone of voice, a dismissive shrug – when confronted by the person you report to.

According to Wikipedia “A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either ‘ranked higher than’, ‘ranked lower than’ or ‘ranked equal to’ the second.” It is rank and power that makes a boss/employee relationship difficult to navigate, it is not an even playing field. The boss is endowed with a structural rank that elevates their role and opinions as superior to those who to report them. ‘Subordinates’, while a distasteful term, is typically an accurate description of the ranked-lower-than-followers. Support is typically more welcome than challenge, particularly upwards. By virtue of their position and the experience that earned that position, managers feel entitled to have the last word, to make a ‘call’. My way or the highway is an all too familiar modus operandi. Down the chain of command challenge is routine and expected, the manager outranks those who work for her. Her view has more credence.

Our rank and power in the workplace is too often administered unconsciously. We too often play along following the behaviours modelled in an environment, slipping in to the expectations of various organisational roles. Thinking on followership encourages more vigilance around around the roles of leaders and followers, their relationships and how we deal with each other at work. I know, anecdotally at least, that the higher up an organisation leaders climb the more isolated they become. The better informed we are by those around us the more robust our decisions will be. Leaders need followers, whole followers with their support and their ideas and their dissent. The roles of, and expectations upon, leaders and followers need some fluidity in that followers will lead leaders and leaders will follow followers at times.

“Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the follower willing to speak out shows precisely the kind of initiative that leadership is made of.” says Warren Bennis

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 hit Christchurch this week. The destruction wrought is horrifying and the loss of life is yet to be tallied. A devastating event.

I’ve watched from across the Tasman Sea feeling distressed and depleted by irrational natural disasters and the destruction left in their wake. I’ve talked in hushed tones with friends, we sorrowfully shake our heads and agree that acts of nature are unassailable in their force, and can’t be negotiated with. A large part of a city has been reduced to rubble and our response is one of impotence, whatever we do there will be another disaster and whatever comes next time will be as swift and unexpected.

We’re resigned to the next destructive event just happening.

In the corporate world the potential for destruction is a little the same. We manage to reduce people to rubble, from time to time. It happens because as leaders with our innate limitations, we have little appreciation of our power over followers, and the associated ability to wreak havoc with the boorish use of judgement.

I experienced an example in one workplace. The organisation was feedback averse. They comprised a competent and academically qualified workforce, who deemed themselves self-assessing and self-regulating. Feedback was largely seen as unnecessary by the clever employees. In an environment like that it is easy for a leader to hold followers as accountable for their mistakes believing that they should have known better.

It’s too easy with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight to point the finger at some hapless culprit and deem them responsible. In reality a follower accused of wrongdoing can have a very different assessment of the circumstances she works within and her performance, than the view held by those she reports to.

This is the sort of situation where a 360 degree assessment (or feedback) exercise can be wheeled out. Not for the leaders mind you but for those in the upper/middle of the organisational structure, those judged to be making errors. In the feedback exercise, the leaders may feel free to share their opinions anonymously, to inform the follower of their shortcomings. They’re free to provide opinions not ever verbalised or previously talked about. Detail. I have seen people reduced to rubble, by such an assessment and the gush of feedback not previously aired. It is particularly devastating when ones view of oneself is opposed by those one immediate supervisors. You can be hit by unassailable forces and because what is said is ‘true’ you’re left with little recourse.

Some of the standard tools and methods we wield in organisations can shake individuals as relentlessly as earthquakes shake cities. We don’t tend to fear assessments offered by organisations the same way as natural disasters, even so the havoc they wreak can be as unpredictable as that of a cyclone.

As leaders we can pay too little heed to our power to inflict structural damage, to impact another’s well-being. As both leaders and followers we dismay over an earthquake’s destruction but accept as reasonable that a leader can shake an employee the core, and reduce a follower to rubble.

Are follower’s underestimating their own power?

We tend to assume that the leader’s opinion must dominate, and that assumption exists for good reason. The leader’s opinion governs. An expectation of courageous followers is to see themselves as equals of the leaders they follow and speak-up and challenge. The degree of difficulty is determined by the openness of the leader and environment. Tricky.