Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders

So, keep listening and discover how a group of women managed to get the Nazis to cancel the extermination of thousands of Jews; find out which type of followers are the most likely to become leaders; and learn who was responsible for one of the biggest disasters in the history of American business.

Followership is divided into three parts, titled Seeing Followers, Being a Follower, and Future Followers. The author carefully groups followers into five types, which she labels as Isolates, Bystanders, Participants, Activists, and Diehards. She gives clear and convincing descriptions of each type, and the wide variety of examples makes her ideas easy to digest.

As the author points out early on in this book, "followership" is a strange word. It's not even in the dictionary. This is a sign of how much we've focused on leadership, at the cost of understanding the real dynamics between leaders and followers.

In the introduction, she uses a tale by George Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, to illustrate that power does not always lie with those who appear to be in control. She suggests that there are two ways of understanding what a follower is: Followers can be defined in terms of their rank – that is, they have less power and influence than their superiors do. But they can also be defined in terms of their behavior: They're people who go along with someone else's plans and wishes.

In the first chapter, called Fictions, the author refers to an ad campaign by car manufacturer Audi that urged consumers to "Never Follow." She thinks the spectacular success of this campaign shows how the American culture of individualism makes people unwilling to see themselves as followers. For many of us, the idea of being led, or being subordinate to somebody else, is somehow shameful. This book shows us that this is far from true.

However, as the author points out, many of us find ourselves in both leadership and followership positions at the same time. Often, our jobs involve managing people who answer to us, at the same time that we are expected to report to our own superiors. The chapter ends by noting that the power of the CEO has diminished in America's corporate sector, and people-power is on the rise.

In chapter two, called Facts, we learn that the "great man theory" – as the author calls it – is no longer useful in explaining human relations. Leaders are more vulnerable today because they're more closely monitored and reviewed. An interesting example of this is how bloggers have managed to impact on China's powerful ruling class.

Things are different now because of two important changes that took place in the last half of the twentieth century. One was the counterculture of the 1960s, when political activists brought an end to the Vietnamese War. Standing up for moral and political beliefs against the state was seen to work worldwide. The other was the spread of knowledge made possible by the information revolution.

The author gives the example of higher education, where email has prompted more equality between students and their professors. This shows how the Internet has changed the dynamic between those who hold positions of power and authority, and those who don't.

This chapter concludes with the reality of "global political awakening." This is a new belief by people all over the world that they have the right to dignity, and the right to speak up and be heard. Imperious behavior by leaders, be they CEOs or opera conductors, is out.

In the third chapter, called Relationships, the author probes some of the reasons why most followers do, in fact, follow their leaders – even when they don't really approve of what those leaders are doing. The answers have to do with self-interest, power, and pecking orders. She makes the point that there may well be a growing a number of followers speaking the truth to those who wield power over them. But she emphasizes that doing so requires courage. The author concludes that asking what followers should do, instead of asking only what leaders should do, is a step in the right direction.

Chapter Four, called Types, explains that by over-emphasizing leaders, we typically fail to distinguish between different types of followers. By way of example, the author brings to our attention the difference between followers who just tag along, and followers who are passionate and committed. She glances at the typologies outlined by certain writers, and then outlines her own. The gage she uses to define the differences between followers is their varying levels of engagement.

The type of followers that she calls "Isolates," for example, are not entirely engaged. Isolates know nothing about their leaders – and make no effort to find out about them either. Their ignorance tends to strengthen leaders, who are already in a strong position. One example is those Americans who are eligible to vote, but never do.

"Bystanders," another group of followers, fail to participate, but they do observe what's going on. This means that their lack of action or engagement is deliberate. "Participants," on the other hand, tend to put their money where their mouths are and will do something to affect outcomes – either in favor of, or against, their leaders.

Going further, "Activists" are those who are energetic either in support of their leaders or against them. Finally, "Diehards" would give their lives for a cause.

It's Chapter Five, on Bystanders, that takes Nazi Germany as its main case study. The author confronts the painful, perplexing subject of the majority of Germans who did nothing. In the context of followership, she re-articulates the haunting question: Why did these people fail to speak out against, or prevent, the sadistic mistreatment of the German Jews, who used to be their neighbors and colleagues? In the build-up to the Holocaust, many of them knew what was going on.

In and amongst the disturbing stories of people turning a blind eye, the author cites one example where non-Jews did protest racist Nazi actions, although admittedly they had personal motivation for doing so. In 1943, 2,000 Jewish men were locked in a detention center in Berlin, prior to being sent to Auschwitz. As news of their incarceration broke, hundreds of women rushed there to demand the Nazis give them back their husbands. Amazingly, they did.

This chapter is underpinned by the author's declared bias against followers who are only Bystanders, especially those who do nothing when human lives are at stake. To abandon responsibility at the individual level is to abandon it at the group level, she says – recommending that followers get engaged early on.

Chapter Six tells the story of how the pharmaceutical giant Merck pulled a drug off the market in 2004. At that point, the company had to admit that the drug could double the risk of heart attack if taken for more than eighteen months. An editorial in The New York Times revealed that scientists at Merck had known about the health risks, but had resisted FDA recommendations to put a warning on the label. On top of that, they had actively looked for ways to avoid addressing the concerns of doctors about the drug's safety. The author uses this case study to show the mess that can result when followers go their own way.

The Merck story hammers home the importance of people who are not at the top of the command chain – in particular, expert workers, or, as the author calls them, knowledge workers. Because these followers have more information, they also have more power than most other employees. This turns them into decision makers. In the Merck story, four such people failed to warn their leader of the damages that could lie ahead. As a result, they bear some responsibility for one of the biggest disasters in the history of American business.

This is a cautionary tale about the effect of the relationships between followers. The Merck experts egged each other on. Their reputations and careers were heavily dependent on the success of the product, as the company was desperate to produce a new blockbuster drug. They slid into poor decision making and groupthink. Here, we learn that you have to be extra careful when a leader is not an expert in the company's specialty. In this case, the CEO of Merck was not a scientist. When a non-expert has to lead followers who are experts, he or she must find effective ways to monitor the work of these followers.

Chapter Seven, on Activists is, by contrast, an upbeat story. It tells of a group of Catholic activists who set up an organization called Voice of the Faithful. Its purpose was to watch over the growing scandal about priests in the Boston area who'd sexually abused children in their congregations.

Voice of the Faithful managed to have the priests exposed and removed from their posts, and some of them went to prison. But the activists didn't stop there. This abuse had been going on for decades, in some cases, and the church had been aware of it. Not only had church authorities covered up the abuse, but they'd allowed the abusing priests to move to other parts of the Catholic community and carry on committing their crimes. Finally, the Cardinal who was responsible for implementing such a criminally negligent policy was forced to resign.

In spite of this sour note, this chapter tells a beautiful tale about people-power. But there's a warning in the author's afterthought. It can be risky for activists to oppose a leader. Followers brave enough to take on someone more powerful than themselves need to weigh up the costs for themselves and their families.

The final chapter in this section is titled "Diehards." The author makes the point that diehards are rare, because not many people are prepared to die for a cause. There's one obvious exception – when a group of people must be diehards – and that's the military. This chapter looks in detail at a US Army operation in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan when American soldiers lost their lives, arguably as a result of wrong-minded orders from above. The author makes twin points here: The first is that diehards in the army, who follow orders and risk their lives for their country, give followers a good name. Second, she notes that this places a duty on their superiors to lead wisely and well.

The last part of the book, on Future Followers, returns to a more general discussion, with several interesting examples of leaders, followers, regimes, and protesters.

Chapter nine, called Values, begins with the assertion that there are good and bad followers. It starts with a helpful reminder of how we define the different kinds of followers. Then it plunges into a moving account of how a group of American children became Activists after seeing a movie about the Sudanese genocide.

The book underlines a trend among Activist followers. They make the decision not to depend on those in charge of them, and actually take charge themselves. In a way, this transforms them from followers to leaders – but they're leading a different group from the one in which they were originally followers. The author points out that diehards are the most likely type of followers to become leaders.

One poignant observation is that many prominent diehards are women, who only become diehards after a tragedy befalls their children. The first example here is particularly convincing: a woman from a group named Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The author also looks at whistle-blowers, who she says are 'diehards' because the risks they take are often very high.

When looking at bad followership, we learn that a willingness to engage is not always good. It depends on what we want to achieve by engaging. Followers who are diehards for murderous leaders or unsavory cult gurus are not admirable. We're reminded of this by the examples of Pol Pot and the Waco sect leader, David Koresh.

The final chapter, Transformations, argues that leadership and followership are inseparable, and that followers are not second to leaders. Given that most people are followers most of the time, it seems odd that there are so many seminars and courses on leadership, and almost none on followership.

The author suggests that now is the time to develop good followers, because the power and influence of followers is growing. Recognizing follower power, the book ends with a number of tips on how to stiffen the spine of followers and avoid mindless compliance, both in the workplace and in the public arena.

As well as exposing an important new trend and being a fascinating read, this is a book about resilience, resistance, and integrity. Without being at all pedantic or moralizing, it is nevertheless a morally uplifting book. It will be interesting to see if Followership's pioneering focus feeds into the development of future management theory.

Followership by Barbara Kellerman is published in hardback by Harvard Business School Press.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Click here to buy the book from Amazon. Thanks for listening.