Leadership has been the mantra of what a great executive is and has the potential to one day be. Everyone talks about leadership and the signals that someone is emerging as a great leader on a specific topic or task. We hold great leaders up and write volumes of books and articles adorning and celebrating them on the cover. Yet when you step back and put it all into perspective what we’re doing most of the time is ‘following’ and there is very little discussion about how to be a great follower.
The traits and attributes of leadership make it into development and coaching conversations in the form of taking initiative, handling situations with poise and stepping up when others are sidelined. This article is not to diminish leadership in any way (in fact we celebrate those that can and do step up as leaders) but it is about being consciously aware and building a skill set for being a great follower and how understanding and applying a model of great followership can lead to more opportunities of leadership
There is little or no narrative around followership and anything related to being a great follower does not make it into most coaching and development plans. What we experience when someone is a poor follower is in the form of high friction, not a team player, does not seem to “get it”, out for themselves, passive-aggressive behaviors, not bringing people with them on the journey, not setting enough context or keeping people in the loop and so on. These behaviors typically lead to derailment or outright failure rather than proactive development and coaching around the topic of being a great follower and some of the adjustments someone can make to seamlessly follow therefore becoming a high performing executive and member of a team.
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What does great followership mean? This translates into an executive who is keenly aware of their operating environment and leader context. Great followership starts with assessing the executive you report to and understanding their preferences and idiosyncrasies so as a member of their team you can better ‘match’ to these. The goal to being a great follower is to take ‘bad friction’ out of the reporting relationship and replace it with good friction or matching behaviors. The challenge for anyone who reports to someone is that behavioral friction (or bad matching) prevents you from being your best. When you are irritated by someone and how they interface with you, bad friction enters the relationship and taints the interaction rather than allowing your content and contributions to flow and add value. The bad friction can build up over time and lead to avoidance of the individual in the early days and eventually can lead to derailment and outright failure.
What exactly is matching? Matching is the notion of figuring out the preferences and idiosyncrasies of the person you report to. It is not a hard process; it just takes a little diagnosis and some discipline. Many people do this on their own (consciously or subconsciously) and they accrue the trust and additional opportunities that go with effective matching rather than the bad friction that accrues when there is no matching. Matching is one of the easiest ways to increase your performance with the person you report to. By taking ‘bad friction’ out you create the context for a more positive and constructive interaction whereby your content is front and center rather than something that is bothering them about how you interface. When bad friction is in a reporting relationship it creates cognitive stress for everyone often leading to avoidant behavior or conflict. The bad friction shuts down a person’s content and instead turns the relationship into high friction. When there is high friction caused by even a small amount of irritation people tend to practice avoidance diminishing performance, lowering the flow of ideas and content.
There are the obvious (but ironically not obvious to many) and most basic ways to follow by ‘low friction matching’ such as communication preference alignment. If you report to someone who likes to be communicated with in a certain way, then simply adopt that style with them. If they prefer email or a quick phone call or in person for specific topics then match their preferences. Additionally, some executives like significant in person time, some have preferences around how they are presented to, some have preferences around specific formatting and how content is arranged and so on. It sounds obvious but so many people do not “match” and continue to do things ‘their way’, eventually introducing bad friction into the relationship and irritating the person they report to which reduces their ability to shine on their ideas and content.
Another simple match is aligning to an introvert or an extrovert. Again, it sounds obvious and simple. If you’re an extrovert and you are aligning to an introvert much of the positive matching is around dialing your energy down. Often times, especially with someone more junior who is reporting to or presenting to a more senior introvert, their inability to match to the environment will be taken as they ‘felt more junior’ or ‘we are not sure they could operate in this environment.’ The high energy often translates into over talking and over sharing. If you’re traveling with an introvert, it is about not having to interact and engage at a high level and allowing the introvert quiet energy recovery time. On the other hand, if you’re an introvert and report to an extrovert it is about working on your energy management by dialing it up. I have coached many introverted leaders and their ability to be an authentic extrovert for a period of time is nothing short of amazing, but this is an energy draining activity and requires recovery time. Introverts often fade over the course of a back-to-back day and figuring out ways to try and recover energy is important. When an introvert does not bring the higher energy to the interactions they can be perceived as a loner, too quiet, having to be invited into the discussion and when they do enter, often they are seen as overly negative on a topic. The matching here, like all matching, is not to eliminate the absolute ‘goodness’ of being one or the other but to simply read your audience and/or direct report and add range to your leadership style.
If we take it up a level of sophistication let’s define two types of cognitive styles that have specific preferences built into them. In the world there are what I would call ‘thinkers’ and there are those that are ‘blinkers’ (most of us know who we are). Thinkers as you would expect like to have time with content to think. They prefer to have a short agenda, some context and if a pre-read is required it should be sent to them ahead of the meeting. Blinkers on the other hand are ‘in the moment’ intuitive people who are comfortable handling just about everything on the fly. They derive energy from having high and low stakes interactions across a wide remit of topics in the moment and off the cuff. If we take a thinker as the leader and you are a blinker the mismatch in cognitive styles can quickly lead to a lot of bad friction which can escalate into avoidance or even derailment for the blinker executive stemming from a mismatch of styles and a failure to ‘match’ with their leader. The blinker will often want to simply ‘catch’ the thinker on various decisions and discussion topics, and this often does not go well as a thinker does not like to be caught off guard on new topics or being caught in the hallway to engage in a high stake decision discussion. As such, they will practice avoidance or if they are “caught” they will use defense mechanisms to simply not engage on the topic until the relevant context, facts, data and background are provided. However, if you have a thinker reporting to a blinker, the tables are reversed with equally impactful consequences. The blinker will want to constantly engage in real time on various topics without a pre-read or the commensurate background leaving the thinker flat footed in the moment and often struggling to engage the way the blinker would prefer, again leading to perceived underperformance and introducing bad friction into the relationship.
There is a simple fix on both sides of the bad friction of thinkers and blinker followership and matching. If you are a blinker reporting to a thinker simply start to be more planned with your interactions by providing a short agenda, some context and a pre-read if required. When providing the thinker with great matching they will in turn engage with you rather than trying to avoid you. You take the bad friction out of the reporting relationship which paves the way for a high content relationship. Similarly, if you are a thinker and report to a blinker the degree of matching is a little harder but can still be accomplished. The best strategy is to look ahead each week against the core topics your blinker manager will be interested in engaging on and do a little ‘think’ prep. This process of looking ahead on topics and proactively triangulating information and doing the think prep allows the thinker to engage as a blinker with their manager paving the way for a high impact content driven interaction in the moment.
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