Enough talk about bad leaders! Are You a good follower? Do you engage with your leader? Do you speak up, belong to a political party, demonstrate when needed, or vote? Bad followers remain quiet and your silence as a follower signals that you are either ignorant or too frightened to speak up. It is because you remain neutral or stay quiet that bad leaders remain in power. A good follower speaks out the first time he/she notices the leader’s misbehavior; he/she shouts from the rooftop before it becomes entrenched.
When you as a good follower confront your leaders, you will make sure you are not biased by ethnic, religious or political alignment. Rather, as a good follower, you will make the effort to get facts. You are willing to listen to advice and are open to change as you seek for allies.
The bad follower is motivated by selfish interests like financial, political, ethnic, or religious interests, but the good follower is motivated only by the public interest, the best interest of their organization, state or country.
Leaders asking religious leaders to endorse them are trying to make bad followers of us. Same with leaders who bring up their religion, ethnicity or race in debates.
The worst followers (let’s call them the F-followers) just don’t care about their leaders and are not interested in communicating with them. They won’t vote or identify with any political party.
Next to these are the followers (let’s call them the P-followers) who are aware of what is going on but won’t participate. Like many Germans during Hitler’s reign, or South African’s during the apartheid era, these followers observe what is happening, talk about it, but watched on like spectators in a football stadium during a match.
Then you have more active followers (let’s call them the C-followers) who engage with their leaders passively. They vote and may financially support political parties.
More active followers (let’s call them the A-followers) are however emotionally involved with their leaders. They actively support or work against their leaders participating as volunteers in campaigns or participating in demonstrations to drive home their point.
The gold standard followers (let’s call them the A*-followers) are those who are completely and unequivocally in support of or against their leaders. They are also willing to go to jail or die for a course they believe in. Mohammed Ali, Dr. King Jnr, Mandela, Malala and the Arab Spring organizers/demonstrators are a few examples.
Success is when we have great leaders and great followers.
Followers play a vigorous and important role in the success of any organization or society.
Shifting the focus from leadership to followership is one way of making sure that followers get the credit they deserve and to remind followers of the influence they can wield.
We tend to overemphasize the importance of leaders and at the same time, we ignore the power of followers. Yet, these leaders cannot succeed without the hard work of followers.
Bad leaders only thrive if we do nothing or not enough. We need systems in place to make policies work and by extension, we would live healthier and longer lives. We need to make these leaders work for us.
Today’s blog is a call to arms. From Canada to Cuba, India to Italy, Guatemala to Ghana, followers should rise to defend their values, their future, and their country. Followers should lead from behind as followers.
