We all talk about the need for leadership. But who talks about followers?
This is not an easy question. Tons of books are published on leadership, but very little on followership despite the fact that very few people are leaders all the time, and most of us are followers in different situations. Thus we currently have a situation where even President Kgalema Motlanthe is not the top leader in the country as he is deputy to ANC president Jacob Zuma.
There is an increasing recognition of the importance of followership, not just for the vast majority who will never be leaders, or who chose not to be leaders, but also as a preparation for good leadership.
In order to become a good leader, most people first have to learn how to be good followers. According to Aristotle, "He who has never learnt to obey cannot be a good commander", but a more sophisticated conception has evolved in which followers are not simply sheep who follow blindly.
This is the danger with dogmatic authoritarian leaders like Adolf Hitler who led his people to utter disaster.
Effective followers are highly participative, critical and independent thinkers. They are not "yes men", and good leaders appreciate them as they feel confident enough to hear contrary views that can help them avoid pitfalls.
It is very easy to fall into "groupthink", where group pressures lead to faulty decision-making due to pressures to conform and filter out warning signals.
The flawed decision by US President John F Kennedy to authorize the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is often cited as an example of groupthink. An effective follower would have been spunky enough to alert the president to the possibilities of failure.
It is interesting that the skills of effective followers have much in common with the skills for effective leaders. For example, they continuously learn and develop, show commitment to organisational goals, and lead and manage themselves effectively.
They have a high sense of responsibility for their own actions and for the decisions of the group. They will therefore question or even oppose leadership that is unethical or against the good of the group.
Follower development is an important responsibility of leadership. According to Sir Adrian Cadbury, former head of Cadbury Schweppes: "Good leaders grow people, bad leaders stunt them; good leaders serve their followers, bad leaders enslave them."
It seems to me that in the rough and tumble of politics, this is often neglected as leaders seek total obedience and put down potential rivals.
This was clearly the case under Thabo Mbeki. The irony is that those who squashed dissent at his bidding now preach fealty to principles of good governance rather than the patronage appointments that were rife under his leadership.
The ideal is "servant leadership". It is described by Robert Greenleaf as follows: "It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead... The best test is: do those served grow as persons, do they grow while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"
General George Marshall, Army chief of staff during World War II, once observed that there was no limit to the amount of good that people could accomplish, as long as they didn't care who received the credit.
This is no doubt true, but in the real world people are not so selfless. Appropriate incentives need to be put in place so that people do receive recognition for their good efforts.
This would help in aligning the interests of leaders and followers.
We should all perform our roles diligently, whether it be leader or follower, or even both in different circumstances.
Ultimately, though, the only person that one can truly lead is oneself. This self-mastery leads to responsible citizens who are the necessary bedrock for a successful democracy.
Jack Bloom is Democratic Alliance leader in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. This article first appeared in his weekly e-mail letter, Rising Tide, February 2 2009
