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Effective Followership

You must know how to follow before you can lead.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all play the role of follower much of the time--regardless of our position. Interestingly, effective followers share many of the same characteristics as effective leaders. As a result, cultivating followership skills can be an excellent way to become a more effective leader. Followership can also be called "leading up," "managing up," or "leading from the middle."

Tips for Change Agents

Effecting change in a large organization is difficult. Those difficulties can be magnified greatly in the public sector. Entrenched rules and structures pose many obstacles. Resource limitations often seem to be the things in greatest abundance. And the possibility of criticism from senior bosses, Congress and the media tends to make many managers risk averse. So how does one overcome all these obstacles to bring about significant positive change? This article will outline 12 strategies, and practices that can be very helpful to the change agent in government.

Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer

Throughout history there have been leaders who made disastrous decisions. In this article, Michael A. Roberto argues that poor decisions are usually caused by poor decision-making processes. One of the most important things a leader can do when he/she needs to make an important decision, he writes, is to "decide how to decide." The process chosen by the leader can have a huge impact on both the quality of the decision and the organization's buy-in when implementing it. Dr. Roberto dispels several myths about how decisions are made in organizations (e.g. "Myth 4: Managers Analyze and Then Decide") and provides some great insights into how leadership styles, cognitive biases and organizational defensive routines can get in the way of effective decision making. This article was published as Chapter 1 of Roberto's terrific book Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer. Reproduced by GovLeaders.org with the kind permission of Pearson Education.

Dynamic Followership: The Prerequisite for Effective Leadership

Lt. Col. Sharon LaTour and Lt. Col. Vicki Rast (both USAF) assert that supervisors can--and must--play a vital role in developing the next generation of leaders by teaching their subordinates to become dynamic followers. They provide an excellent description of dynamic followership and suggest a list of follower competencies that employees should cultivate. Originally published in the Winter 2004 issue if Air & Space Power Journal. Reproduced by GovLeaders.org with permission.

Courageous Followers, Courageous Leaders

Subordinates have a key role to play in helping their supervisors improve their leadership skills, argues Ira Chaleff. Rather than complain about the faults of our superiors, we all have a responsibility to help them leverage their strengths and address any fatal flaws they may have. Chaleff observes that those who go to the trouble of cultivating relationships of trust with their superiors and then offer honest feedback to them can make a huge impact on the quality of leadership in their organizations.

The Doctrine of Completed Staff Work

This classic memorandum was originally promulgated during World War II and has since been reissued in many organizations as the definition of what effective staff members do.

Leading Your Boss

This article provides a taste of the kinds of leadership stories Michael Useem covers in his book Leading Up. Includes a number of compelling examples of upward leadership--both good and bad and suggests a number of strategies that executives can implement to encourage employees to help keep their bosses on the right track.

The Ten Rules of Good Followership

Col. Phillip Meilinger (USAF) argues that we need to pay more attention to the qualities that define good followership given that "all of us will be followers more often than we will be leaders." Most of his rules of good followership require significant courage and integrity. Public servants who live by these rules will not only be effective staffers but will also be well on their way to becoming leaders of character. This article was published in AU-24 Concepts for Air Force Leadership, a superb collection of leadership articles, most of which were written by senior military leaders.

A Message to Garcia

"A Message to Garcia" is a classic essay about initiative published by Elbert Hubbard in 1899 in The Philistine. The essay created such a sensation that Hubbard republished it as a booklet with additional background and commentary.