Inspiring examples of followership

One of the reasons it’s hard to get people interested in followership is that not only is it hard to swallow our pride and admit to our role as servants, but that there are so few inspiring examples of followership in our culture.

Inspiring stories of leadership abound:
· Hannibal crossing the Alps with his army of elephants
· John F Kennedy enthusiastically declaring the United States would go to the moon
· Sir Edmond Hillary reaching the summit of Mt Everest

But in the case of Hillary, he definitely had a true master of followership in his sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

Here is someone employed as a guide, navigator and beast of burden to accompany his master to the top of the world.

It’s hard to really grasp the sacrifice and tough decisions Tenzing must have made to serve.

Did he simply stoicly bear the load given to him, or did he take play an active role in the decisions made by the expedition?
Was he anticipating the needs of his master?
Did he use initiative and specific domain knowledge to give more to the task than asked?

Probably. It's certainly worth thinking how we would act in a similar circumstance.

There is some doubt about whether Hillary even made it to the summit first, but here is a true example of a faithful servant getting on with the business of doing his job.

These are the sorts of topics I want to cover in future blogs.

For the time being though - at least we can say: we followers have heroes too.

Followership is not cool

It’s not cool to talk about followership.

People would prefer to think of themselves as courageous, inspiring leaders, rather than faithful, diligent servants. So it’s easy to understand why leadership books outnumber books on service by about a hundred to one.

Being a good follower means firstly having the humility to admit that you are a follower.

In Western democracies, we are so focused on the power and independence of the individual that any suggestion that we should sacrifice our freedom for the notion of serving someone else seems ridiculous. And yet most of us are in jobs that require us to do exactly that.

So give in.
Admit it.

The first step in your followership journey is to admit that you are a follower and want to get better at the discipline of followership.

Why Followership?

We are cogs.
We are grunts.
We are the slaves building the pyramids. We will not be buried beneath one.

So much these days is made of leadership.

Everyone is expected to be a leader. Everyone is expected to aspire to leadership. There are leadership books, tapes, training courses, seminars, magazines and blogs.

The problem is: most of us are not leaders; at least not in the sense that most of the leadership literature means.

We are not generals, CEOs or presidents.

The reality is that if we really wanted to get good at something that would make a measurable impact in the organizations in which we work, the art of service ought to be top of the list. Why focus leadership when followership is what we do most of every day?

This blog is about serving, obeying, satisfying and achieving.
This blog is not about whining, shirking, fantasizing or blaming.
This blog will not be popular.
This blog will be real.

This blog will hopefully assist those of us who want to take a step back and stop pretending to run the show, and take a step forward to make progress and actually help people.

If you're more accustomed to feeling the whip on your back than in your hand - you already know what I'm talking about.

Stay tuned.