A concept that you will find woven throughout LeadershipTraQ material is the idea of self-leadership (a.k.a. super-leadership, primal leadership, the new leadership). While traditional leadership literature focuses the leader's attention on followers, self-leadership challenges the leader to focus on him/herself first. Dee Hock, founder of Visa International, suggests that a leader spend 40% of their time on self-leadership.1 Ironically, a dilemma every leader faces in getting the best out of her/his subordinates is knowing when to be a follower--in essence, putting yourself in a place to be influenced or led by your followers.

I once worked with a large church that was considering a change in their leadership structure that was a dramatic departure from their denomination's tradition and policy. The change was to hire a Leading Pastor to lead, and a Teaching Pastor to teach. Historically, the roles had been the responsibility of one person. A savvy denominational official who had spent most of his adult life knee-deep in church problems was solicited for his advice regarding the change. The sage posed a question that was on the minds of everyone; "What will you do if the Teaching Pastor tries to take the church from or usurp the Leading Pastor?" The Leading Pastor respectfully answered, "I would never hire anyone I couldn't follow." To which the church official replied, "What an incredible concept."

The concept of following your followers is not to be confused with 'delegating,' 'getting out of the way' or 'giving credit.' It requires your attention, skills and influence to be available for assignment. Such ego-less behavior creates a wonderful conduit of trust and respect. Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman in their book, Organizing Genius suggest that great groups and great leaders create each other.2

Perhaps you are saying, "I get it, but how do I know to whom and when to follow?" A good way to identify change agents is to look for people who other people in your organization are following, or in some cases, may be complaining about. The term I like to use for such a process is 'brailing the culture,' a phrase popularized by author Faith Popcorn. Using a simple methodology like 'Managing By Walking Around and Listening' can be a great starting place. Some executives even schedule a brown bag lunch once a week with a handful of people from varied levels of their organization just to hear what they are thinking. While it is tempting to use such opportunities to vision-cast, encourage, or at worst, reprimand--the goal is to listen. Sometimes new employees or even interns can be change-agents simply because they don't suffer from the tunnel vision or myopia that develops from looking at things through the same 'corporate' lens.

Peter Guber, director of the movie, Gorillas in the Mist, tells of the nightmare of shooting on location in Rwanda with 200 animals that wouldn't 'act.' The screenplay called for the gorillas to do what was written and when they didn't, the only option was to fall back on a flawed formula that had failed before -- that of using dwarfs in gorilla suits on a sound stage. It was during an emergency meeting that a young intern asked, "What if you let the gorillas write the story? What if you sent a really good cinematographer into the jungle with a ton of film to shoot the gorillas? Then you could write a story around what the gorillas did on the film." Everyone laughed and wondered what the intern was doing in a meeting with experienced filmmakers. But ultimately they did exactly what she suggested, and the cinematographer "came back with phenomenal footage that practically wrote the story for us," Guber says, "We shot the film for $20 million, half of the original budget." The moral: The woman's inexperience enabled her to see opportunities where others saw problems.3

Choosing when to let your followers lead is not as difficult as it may seem. Let them lead when they have a better idea, more expertise, greater passion or when you are stuck. A vacuum of leadership has been identified in every strata of society, and a telltale sign is when a leader is reluctant to be a follower.

SELF-WORK

• Are you hiring people you could confidently follow?
  
• How do you brail your organization?
  
• When was the last time you followed one of your followers?

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1 Waldrop, M. Mitchell. "Dee Hock On Management." Fast Company,
Oct. 1996: 79

2 Bennis, Warren, and Patrticia Biederman. Oranizing Genius. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997

3 Gruber, Peter. Quoted in A. Muoio, ed. "My Greatest Lesson." Fast Company, June-July 1998: 82+

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