This is the first article in our Followership sequence within our Value Leadership series. While everyone else develops leaders, Slide3 focuses on what actually gets things done…developing the followership capabilities of the 80% who execute the vision. Our evidence-informed approach tackles the real business challenges: building agile readiness, accelerating decisions, and creating teams where every person is actively engaged in driving results.
Let’s start with the facts. When Indiana Wesleyan University’s Center for the Advancement of Followership conducted a survey of 1000 executives, the results heralded followership as key to performance and output.
- 98.6% say effective followership improves work unit performance
- 99% say it affects work output quality
- 96.1% say it’s more than just doing what you’re told
- 92.7% say leadership and followership are interrelated
But here’s the problem. Those same executives said…
- 95.7% of people don’t know how to follow
That’s a huge disconnect compounded by the fact that companies are spending billions of dollars on leadership training… followership crickets.
Who Are the Followers? At Some Point… Everyone.
What exactly is followership – and who are the followers? The 1992 book, The Power of Leadership, by Dr. Robert E. Kelley, defines 5 followership types.
- Exemplary: Critical, independent thinkers; active contributors, regardless of power dynamics
- Conformist: Loyal but deferential; unenterprising and dependent on leaders for inspiration
- Alienated: Smart but disengaged; often cynical and prone to disgruntled acquiescence
- Pragmatic: Fence-sitters, survivalists
- Passive: Low initiative, low ownership
These types aren’t fixed labels denoting who people are as individuals. In fact, they’re not fixed categories. Whether someone is Exemplary or Conformist, for example, depends on context that can shift situation to situation. Whether you’re a stakeholder or employee, even a member of the executive team, at one point or another you’re a follower. After all…
- The CEO leads the board’s executive team but takes strategic direction from the board
- The department head leads daily operations but follows the CEO’s vision
- The project manager leads project timelines but follows the subject matter expert’s technical guidance
Even more, some people have the “followership gene.” They enjoy being a follower, knowing they’re consistently contributing to the greater good of organizational goals, vision, and culture.
Mum’s the Word if You’re a Follower
But despite its universality, followership gets little acknowledgment. You can probably count the number of people on one hand whom you’ve heard say, “I’m a follower.” In fact, you, may never have heard anyone make that declaration.
That’s not exactly surprising when you consider most of us grew up hearing “Don’t be a follower.” Followers are branded as sheep, “yes” people. That message has stuck. Even on a questionnaire created by Kelley and used to this day, many force fit their answers, describing themselves as leaders not followers because it makes them feel good – and look good for their manager. They’re saying what they think that manager wants to hear.
But pretending to be something you’re not to look good and fit in runs counter to authenticity, a trait which today has become highly valued. Plus, to be truly authentic in a modern work environment that environment must be psychologically safe enabling individuals to trust that they can be themselves.
Still one caveat: Authenticity only works if that authenticity is attached to positive values. A negative or mean-spirited person could be true to themselves – be authentic – but be ineffective working with others because the environment leaders create is authoritarian and toxic.
Followers Large in Numbers but Grossly Overlooked
Though academics are researching and theorizing about followership, there’s little if any practical application in corporate settings. It’s all about management training. Research shows that organizations rarely give followership “the degree of attention or time required to engage us in understanding it,” says Barbara Kellerman, a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. Kellerman noted that the leadership industry “is built on the proposition that leaders matter a great deal and followers hardly at all.”
In Kelley’s view, the goal is to help people move toward Exemplary so that they’re engaged, thoughtful, and adaptable across teams and workgroups – and are active contributors and open communicators. That said, given complex or turbulent problems that require creative solutions, homogeneous groups – say a group comprising only Exemplary followers – “fall flat on their face,” Kelley says.
That’s why training is so important. The problem is, though, that the training that might focus on followership attributes is done either from the perspective of leadership or by the leaders themselves. And the emphasis is on succession planning and grooming employees for leadership positioning and status.
Even the theory behind that type of training is skewed toward leaders and the belief that better and more effective leaders will bring out the best in subordinates, improving performance, engagement and retention. That begs a couple of questions…
- What happens if a leader is ineffectual… even bad, authoritarian or harsh and critical of subordinates
- And what if you’re a subordinate outside of Kelley’s Exemplary status? Does that mean you intrinsically possess negative characteristics or is your followership a result of an ineffective leader – perhaps even a toxic work environment?
The High Cost of Leadership Obsession
In this environment, companies are paying top dollar for all this training – according to ResearchandMarkets.com, as much as $352.66 billion in 2024 with leadership development programs about 20% to 25% of that, or almost $90 billion.
And there’s more, organizations pony up more money when people don’t know how to follow effectively. The litany includes…
- Passive followers need constant supervision
- Conformists overlook the early warning signs of costly errors
- Alienated thinkers stay disengaged
- Pragmatics stall progress
- Leaders get burned out covering the gaps – and so do followers when they become disgruntled, minimizing performance, productivity, and value driven outcomes.
These aren’t soft costs. They show up in turnover, missed deadlines, and leadership and employee burnout that all directly impact your bottom line. Poor followership, then, isn’t just inefficient. It’s expensive.
The Followership Audit: Your GSD Blueprint
Our Operational Renovation solutions address these deficits to, quite frankly, enable you and your teams to get shit done (GSD)! We thoroughly assess your operations through our dual lens approach: Mechanical and Behavioral. We evaluate…
- Your systems, your tech, and your workflows (Mechanical)
- Your mindsets, work styles, communications, collaboration, your environment whether psychologically safe or authoritarian (Behavioral)
- Your lack of an Agile environment (Mechanical and Behavioral)
Together, our appraisal reveals…
- Over-supervision hotspots
- Untapped critical thinkers
- Costly blind spots
- Ineffectual leadership
- Inattention to followership
You’ll have better overall employee development – and that includes leaders and followers– improved team effectiveness and enhanced organizational performance. This is how you renovate operations and move to clarity, purpose, mastery, and ultimately autonomy…how you become an agile organization ready to compete in today’s complex marketplace.
From Audit to Agility
When followership is dialed in, performance is optimized.
- Teams move faster and self-manage
- Ideas flow more freely
- Engagement and retention increase
- Collaboration and open communication thrive because of a real psychologically safe environment
This is what business agility looks like – and how it performs.
Leaders: Know Your Followers
Great leaders adjust their style to meet people where they are:• Alienated followers need purpose
- Conformists thrive with autonomy coaching
- Pragmatics drive change when activated
Because here’s the real takeaway: It’s not about being the boss. It’s about being the kind of human people want to follow.
This is how you future-proof your business.
Today’s rising workforce wants clarity, contribution, and recognition and a company that’s mission driven. Companies that elevate followership giving it a strategic value equal to leadership will build cultures designed to adapt, innovate, and thrive.
At Slide3, we call this operational renovation. It’s values-driven, people-centric, and built to Get Things Done. We envision it as the future of work.
Call us if that’s your vision too.
The opportunity cost of inaction grows daily. Because in an economy that rewards adaptation, renovation, personalization, and increasingly purpose, the risk of standing still is higher than the risk of change.