Where you follow, I will lead

BOOK REVIEW: Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Lead ers, Barbara Kellerman; Harvard Business School Press $29.95 (€20)

Where you follow, I will lead Barbara Kellerman argues self-interest is the reason we follow leaders with whom we find fault - benefits of following outweigh disadvantages, and cost of resisting is higher than that of going along, writes Stefan Stern

We will know that the debate over "followership" has matured when the word wins an entry in the Microsoft Word dictionary. Barbara Kellerman's new book should persuade programmers to write new lines of code welcoming "followership" to the Gatesian lexicon.

Her book is a follow-up to her 2004 title Bad Leadership. It is a true companion piece. As the author explains: "Bad leaders . . . cannot possibly do what they do without bad followers. They depend on them absolutely."

It was natural for this distinguished lecturer from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to continue her study by considering those who are led. She begins by defining her terms. For Kellerman, followers are "subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than do their superiors and who therefore usually, but not invariably, fall into line".

That last distinction is important, and gives a hint of the rigorous analysis that will come. Kellerman's reading of existing literature on leaders and followers has been thorough, and she gives a flavour of it in the first part of the book. She concludes, rightly, that a discussion of leadership that does not consider followership is incomplete.

This approach allows her to pose often unasked questions, such as why we follow leaders with whom we find fault. Kellerman knows: "The answer is self-interest. We calculate that the benefits of following outweigh those of not following; and we calculate that the cost of resisting is higher than the cost of going along."

Kellerman's sensitivity to the language of leadership also helps her puncture some of the worst business jargon. She is not very taken with "empowerment", for example. Too often this is a manipulative term, she says. It is "intended to keep subordinates in line by deluding them into thinking that in some fundamental way their relationship to their superiors has changed".

Building on existing theories of followership, Kellerman has devised her own five-pronged classification, based on the varying levels of engagement shown by followers. Her five categories are: isolate, bystander, participant, activist and diehard.

"Isolates in the workplace are uninformed, uninterested, and unmotivated," says Kellerman. "They have no relationship with their leaders or managers. They are silent because they are detached - and because they are silent they are ignored."

Bystanders "observe but do not participate", she says. "This withdrawal is, in effect, a declaration of neutrality that amounts to tacit support for whoever and whatever constitutes the status quo."

She analyses the bystander phenomenon in a long discussion of Nazi Germany.

Participants are engaged to some extent: "They clearly favour their leaders and the groups and organisations of which they are members - or they are clearly opposed. In either case, they care enough to . . . try to have an impact." The sorry case of the now-withdrawn drug Vioxx, the pain relief treatment for arthritis sufferers produced by Merck, illustrates this heading, she says.

Activists "feel strongly about their leaders and they act accordingly . . . they work hard either on behalf of their leaders or to undermine them and even unseat them". The "voice of the faithful" campaign in Boston, which exposed child-abusing priests, shows what activists can achieve.

Last, diehards are "deeply devoted to their leaders; or, in contrast, they are ready to remove them from positions of power, authority and influence by any means necessary. In either case, diehards are defined by their dedication, including their willingness to risk life and limb." US soldiers in Afghanistan, as well as suicide bombers, are true diehards.

Kellerman, a diehard for her thesis, occasionally pushes it a bit far. It seems unfair to label Immelt, McNerny and Nardelli, Jack Welch's team of potential successors at GE, as "superior at being subordinate". There was more to their rise than that. She is also perhaps a little naive to argue that "under the right circumstances the benefits of being a bold subordinate are likely to outweigh the costs".

But this is a constructive and careful analysis of what it means to be a follower. As she observes in her challenging conclusion: "Followers are more important to leaders than leaders are to followers." - (Financial Times service)