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The Importance of Followship
Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].
In keeping with his competitively, combative nature, the homily on the plaque at the front of his desk bucked corporate convention and confronted you with a challenge. It bluntly left no doubt as to his expectation of what you were there to do. “Lead, Follow, or get the Hell out the way.”
And no one was left in any doubt as to which of these three actions he was there to fulfill. It can be endlessly debated at water coolers and over dinner (and often is) whether he is, in fact, the leader. But in his mind, there is no doubting or debating the fact. He is the ultimate leader of the New York Yankees baseball team, and his name is George Steinbrenner.
What is interesting in this characteristically sanguine maxim is Steinbrenner’s acknowledgement of followers. It is a given that all leaders have followers. In fact, there cannot be a leader without a follower (for what is a leader without followers if not marooned in a state of solipsistic limbo?).
They may be counted on one hand or on a thousand hands, but followers are a necessary complement to leadership. And for Steinbrenner, they are an integral part of his solution to winning games: If you cannot lead or you cannot follow, then you have no place on my team. So what is it about followers that are so important to leaders? How do followers inform and define leadership?
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"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." - Groucho Marx |