MARGIE BLANCHARD
Margie and I have been married more than fifty-five years. She is my mentor, my first love, and an unbelievable servant leader. We started our company together and I was smart enough to agree that she should be president. Nearly twenty years ago she stepped down from the presidency to create and lead a think tank we call Office of the Future, whose purpose is to ensure we are not surprised by new innovations or technology that come along. I think you’ll find her essay on followership unique, considering this is a book about leadership—but it’s so applicable in today’s workplace. —KB
DID YOU EVER think about the difference between the words leader and leadership? The leader is just one person, whereas leadership assumes both the person and their followers. In our world, we focus a lot of attention on the leader. That’s who we want to be when we grow up. But the follower is the one who often does all the work. In fact, we spend much more of our time as followers in this world of work than as leaders—an estimated 90 percent of our time. If that’s true, followership may be more important than leadership—particularly if the follower is a servant leader.
“A follower as a servant leader?” you might respond. “Yes,” I would insist. A lot of managers we know would respond in the same skeptical way. In that regard, Ken and I teach a servant leadership course as part of a Master’s of Science in Executive Leadership (MSEL) program we cofounded with the dean of the College of Business at the University of San Diego.
Prior to our weekend class, we ask the students to read Insights on Leadership, a book of essays on service, stewardship, spirit, and servant leadership edited by Larry C. Spears.1 (Larry is the author of “Characteristics of Servant Leaders” in Part 1 of this book.) At the beginning of class, we divide the students into small groups and ask them to share with each other what they learned from the readings and what it means to them. We have them focus on five of the essays that we preassigned. Year after year, the essay that catches the students’ attention the most is “Followership in a Leadership World” by Robert E. Kelley. Why? People don’t think a follower can be an effective servant leader. Kelley suggests followership is often overlooked because most recognition and rewards go to leaders.
Kelley helped me think of all the times as a leader that I have been grateful for followers who do two things. One, they challenge my ideas and implementation style and help me get clarity on what I really want to happen and how to best execute it. Two, when I have a good idea, they are ready to help me implement it by beginning to problem solve some of the challenges my idea or initiative would likely face. The first involves managing up the hierarchy as a servant follower. The second is all about serving as a direct report.
One of the most common questions we’re asked is “What do you do when you believe in servant leadership and want to implement it with your people, but the top manager has a command-and-control (hierarchical leaderdominated) philosophy?”
Our response is “You can comply, complain, confront, dust off your résumé, or become an effective follower.”
The most common methods people use for dealing with a command-and-control leader are to comply—adapt to the flawed philosophy of top management—or complain—spend more time moaning and groaning to anyone who will listen than they spend doing their job. A few people will dust off their résumé and begin looking for a position elsewhere. Even fewer will confront the top manager—which, unfortunately, is not usually very effective. Why? Because they confront before they connect. In other words, they don’t have a relationship with the boss before they deliver their feedback.
When attempting to influence up the hierarchy, it’s important to remember that you have no position power; only personal power, at best. And when you give someone feedback with whom you have no real connection—I don’t care how gently you give it—you will not build up your relationship.
I’ll never forget years ago, when Ken was teaching an occasional course at a business school and a new dean arrived. The dean had written a lot about participative management—an early form of servant leadership. However, he didn’t practice it. He was wheeling and dealing and making all kinds of top-down decisions without any participation from the faculty. Some of the faculty leaders individually decided to confront him about his inconsistent behavior—and yet none of them had ever really connected with this man prior to confronting him. He essentially threw each of them out of his office in turn.
Ken, who agreed with the direction the dean wanted to take the school but was concerned about his decision-making style, realized he had to develop a relationship with the dean before he could give him any feedback. Ken and I believe that building a relationship with someone is like having money in the bank. No matter how well it is done, giving someone feedback draws something from your interpersonal bank account with that person. As a result, you better have some good experiences in your account to draw from. Otherwise, using our banking analogy, you will need a mask and a gun—position power! Ken decided that since he didn’t have any position power with the dean, he had better build up his interpersonal bank account before talking with him about the negative impact his style was having.
So, one day when he saw the dean in the hallway, Ken commented specifically on how much he admired the dean’s writing skills. He said, “I’m working on a paper I hope to get published in a good journal. With your writing experience, would you have time to meet with me? I’d like to share my latest draft with you and get your feedback.” The dean responded immediately: “I’d love to meet with you.” When they met, the dean had all kinds of helpful feedback. At the end of a follow-up meeting the dean casually said, “Ken, how do you think we should deal with some of the jerks in this school?” The key word for Ken was “we.” He knew he now had some money in his interpersonal bank account with the dean—personal power. So he felt free to talk to the dean about how a change in his decision-making style might help and knew the dean would listen without getting defensive. In retrospect, that’s what a helpful, effective servant leader as a follower would do: put the good of the organization ahead of any ego needs.
Now let’s look at the role an effective servant follower plays in helping leaders implement their good ideas. It’s all about going somewhere—and it takes both the leader and the follower. My brother, Tom McKee, who is our company’s chairman and CEO, once told me he evaluated people by the number of things they helped him move forward or even took completely off his plate! Sometimes I think it boils down to a leader creating a vision, destination, or initiative, and a follower understanding that vision and helping it come alive.
I remember a time when I was president of our company and got the idea that our leaders and managers needed to meet one on one with each of their direct reports for at least thirty minutes every other week. While the managers would be responsible for scheduling the meeting, what was different about these meetings was that their direct reports would set the agenda—talk about whatever was on their mind. It could involve having a sick child at home that required them to spend less time in the office, or a particular goal they were working on and needed some support and direction. This was an idea I had heard about from a very successful owner of three fast food restaurants who had the lowest turnover rate by far of any of the other restaurants in the chain. He credited his one-on-one meetings as a major factor in those results. When you think about it, why would a young person go down the street for a small increase in salary when they had an adult who really cared and was interested in them?
So here I was with my new idea for our company. I needed some believers that this initiative could take hold in our organization and that it would make a positive difference in a number of ways. I found a servant follower and we brainstormed and plotted and rounded up a few more followers to experiment with this new practice. As with any change, it was not easy or quick. Even though there were early successes, there were more excuses than there were meetings happening. And yet I continued on, creating various incentives and watching more managers catch on and become converts until one-on-one meetings were finally baked into our culture.
This never would have happened without the role of the followers. They were the ones who had to do something new. We need both servant leaders and servant followers to execute any change.
It goes without saying that leaders’ ideas should be good ones—worth the time and effort both they and their followers are going to invest in making something new happen. Followers need to see a line of sight between a leader’s ideas and some greater good for the organization and the people in it. In my example of one-on-one meetings, we were aiming for less isolation and more connection in the manager/direct report relationship.
I often hear that the world is in desperate need of great leaders—and I agree we are—but I also believe we need what Robert E. Kelley calls exemplary followers.2 These independent critical thinkers are actively involved in serving the organization and making it as good as it can possibly be—an organization that achieves great relationships and great results. As an exemplary follower, each of us is tasked with listening more deeply to new ideas and being open to the possibility of being influenced. Exemplary followers look for the highest value of an idea and help their leaders sharpen their thinking. They look beyond the temporary awkwardness, inconvenience, and discomfort that comes with all change and they are willing to see new and needed resources that may be already in place—like other enthusiastic people willing to try something new. They need to resist the pull and comfort of not changing. When we hear statistics such as 80 percent of change efforts fail, we need to realize that both leaders and followers have the responsibility to not let that continue to happen.
In research for The Ken Blanchard Companies done by our son, Scott, and colleagues Drea Zigarmi and Vicky Essary on the Leadership-Profit Chain,3 they found that an estimated 85 percent of the execution of a vision or change initiative happens through followers. Followers create and refine product and service offerings; they market, sell, and fulfill these offerings; and they play key roles in solving problems. Today, job seekers are drawn toward organizations with followership opportunities that focus on developing people and encouraging their career growth. They are attracted to cultures that give them followership challenges that help them connect their day-to-day activities with a higher purpose: the mission, vision, and values of the organization.
When I was president of our firm, I used to evaluate my day or month on whether I was able to spend at least 50 percent of my time on opportunities and the future, or whether that 50 percent got eaten up by day-to-day concerns and problems that others should handle. For leaders and managers, in most cases—as we have emphasized—the work gets done by servant followers. Most jobs, even the role of president, have a followership component. In fact, the real key to promotion up the hierarchy might be effective followership.
When I talk about effective serving followers, I am not talking about people who are submissive, towing the line, taking orders without question, or playing inside the box of their job description. I’m talking about people who are committed to a higher cause than their personal gain. They are competent and credible people who constantly are looking for ways to grow. They are curious and they set high standards for themselves and others.
How does someone become an exemplary follower in Kelley’s terms? He contends that “the best followers know how to lead themselves.” We’ve felt that way for a long time. That’s why Ken, Susan Fowler, and Laurie Hawkins developed a self-leadership program for our company that teaches people how to develop the mindset and skill set for getting what they need to succeed. When we say succeed, we mean not only personal success but also organizational success. Our belief is that leadership is not something you do to people—it’s something you do with people. This encourages side-by-side leadership, not the old top-down leadership. Servant leaders today realize that they can’t get much done without effective followers.
I have great respect for followers. I am one in 90 percent of my life. In the other 10 percent—when I attempt to lead—I am blessed by exemplary followers, and so is our organization.
Margie Blanchard is cofounder of The Ken Blanchard Companies (www.kenblanchard.com). A compelling speaker, author, entrepreneur, consultant, and trainer, Margie is a corecipient with her husband, Ken, of the Entrepreneur of the Year award from Cornell University. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cornell and her doctorate from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is coauthor of three books: The One Minute Manager Balances Work and Life, Leading at a Higher Level, and Working Well: Managing for Health and High Performance.
1. Larry C. Spears, Insights on Leadership: Service, Stewardship, Spirit, and Servant-Leadership (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997).
2. Robert E. Kelley, “In Praise of Followers,” Harvard Business Review (November 1988).
3. Scott Blanchard, Drea Zigarmi, and Vicky Essary, “The Leadership-Profit Chain,” Perspectives (Escondido, CA: The Ken Blanchard Companies, 2006).