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It’s harder to follow than to lead
I’ve noticed something interesting. Most people assume that it’s harder to lead than to follow. Now, why would they assume this? Followers choose whom they want to follow and this is not necessarily easy. For example: How do you know that the person you follow will take you one step closer to your vision, goal, or objective? How do you know you’re not being lied to or cheated? How do you know that the person you follow isn’t just interested in his or her own power? And what if the person doesn’t live up to your expectations, what do you do? Many dictators have gained power by tricking people into…
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Why you can’t define followers by people’s actions
One reason why people struggle to understand true followership is that they try to define followers by how people act. For example, if people obey orders, they are usually classified as followers. When it comes to politics, followers are believed to be those who vote for a political candidate. Now, here’s why this type of definition doesn’t work. It’s very hard to know WHY people act the way they do. There can be a million reasons why someone obeys an order. Perhaps they WANT to obey or maybe they don’t have a choice. Perhaps someone threatens them or maybe they’re afraid of losing their job. People can also obey because they…
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Followers are not tools of a leader
Hi everyone, I’m sorry for not having posted anything here for a few weeks. I’ve been swamped with work related to my upcoming book (in Swedish) about the art of following. Anyway, I thought I’d take a break from everything and quickly post a short video about something I find very important. I sometimes hear people refer to followers as tools. Usually, the person saying this believes that leaders function as some kind of decision-maker. That the leader has a plan and will then use the followers to ensure the plan is successful. According to this view, followers are nothing but puppets, controlled by a single individual. But as we’ve…
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Leadership is an industry
Leadership is an industry. We mustn’t forget that. There are many people who make a lot of money thanks to our interest in leadership. But how did leadership become such a successful industry? Well, one reason may be the way leadership is marketed. It targets decision-makers with one very simple message: You’re important! In fact, you’re crucial to the success of your company, political party, school or what have you. Therefore, you need to invest money and time in yourself and your leadership. If you do that, you will be able to get more people to do what YOU want. Talk about appealing to people’s egos. No wonder leadership has…
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The role as leader is temporary
Hi everyone, here’s another short post. Today I want to share with you something that very few people realise about leadership. In previous posts, I’ve discussed the fact that people only follow leaders when they want to achieve something. And we kind of pick and choose leaders depending on what we want to achieve. This means we have to rethink what it means to be a leader. When people think of leaders, they often think of a person who has certain influence over a group of people that is more or less static over time. This is important. It means for example that we expect managers to be leaders at work…
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Why we follow – Part 1 – Followership is like love
Through the years I’ve found that one way of explaining the very essence of followership is to compare it with love. We can be forced to do a lot of things that we associated with love, such as having sex, getting married, having kids etc., but that’s not love. No one can make you love them. In fact, no one can make you feel anything and it’s the same with followership. No one can force you to follow them. You can feel obligated, or even be forced to obey someone, but that doesn’t mean you follow them. In other words, the first thing to understand about followership is that it’s…
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Followers and self-leadership
I feel that I need to say a few words about self-leadership. Sometimes I meet people who get a little bit confused when I claim there are no leaders without followers. “Yeah, there’s self-leadership” they argue. Now that argument doesn’t make any sense to me. If I need to lead myself in order to get things done, then don’t I also need to follow myself? If your inner leader tells you to put on your shoes and go for a walk, you’ll immediately run into problems if you refuse to follow yourself. You’ll just be standing there with your shoes in your hand. So no, I don’t think it’s possible to…
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Followers are not sheep
In the previous post- what do we know about followers – I mentioned that no one wants to be a follower. The reason is that followers are often associated with sheep. Now, believe me, that’s not meant as a compliment. For some reason – and I don’t know why – sheep are regarded as stupid. They are considered so dumb, that they’ll die unless someone manages them. In all honesty, this is just mean. What did sheep ever do to us? In fact, as far as I know, sheep are rather smart. Anyway, as to followers, they’re definitely not stupid. Nor are they puppets who simply obey someone else’s orders. As we’ll…
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What do we know about followership?
People spend years studying how to lead but not a day learning how to follow. Companies are no better. They invest millions in leadership development but not a single dime on followership.Why? I think there are two main reasons for this. First of all, no one wants to be a follower because we associate it with something negative. Secondly, many seem to believe that leadership is all that matters. Without great leaders, we can’t really achieve much, so why waste time on followership? But here’s my question: how do we know leaders are vital and important if we don’t know anything about followership? And why do we think being a follower…
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What is followership?
I’ve spent more than 15 years studying followership, but what is followership? Well, simply put it’s how and why we follow people. For example, many believe that followers are the same as subordinates but that’s not the case. A subordinate has to obey orders. A follower, on the other hand, chooses when and how to follow. This means we can force people to become subordinates but we can never force anyone to follow us. We’ll discuss this in more detail in the next coming of posts, so see you soon and enjoy the video below. https://youtu.be/1lIz4iJQ7oU Please note that you have to accept cookies on this site in order for videos…