PREFACE

IF YOU SCROLL THROUGH THE SUBJECT CATALOG at the Library of Congress, you will find the category “leadership” and hundreds of books on the subject. You will not find a category “followership,” and you will only find a handful of articles and books on the subject, tucked away under the leadership rubric. This is curious as there are many more followers in the world than leaders. Improving their performance would seem equally worthy of study as improving the performance of leaders.

I have been absorbed with the subject of followership most of my life, since becoming aware as a child of the systematic destruction of six million European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. In my heart, like so many others, I held the German people responsible, not just their leader Adolf Hitler. When I was seven or eight, I made up games in which I rescued as many people as I could from the Germans’ death camps. It was never enough.

How could a whole country follow a vicious leader to the logical conclusions of his psychosis? This mass support for a psychotic leader may well have created the contemptuous association my generation has with the term follower.

Only later did I learn that one of the basic principles of Nazi ideology was the Führerprinzip—the leader principle—“One people, one Reich, one leader,” which portrayed Hitler as the ultimate source of power and justice. In the Führerstat—the leader state—the Führertreu—those loyal to the leader under any circumstances—were the noblest of human beings. The leader was always right. Questioning the leader was raised to a crime of the highest order.

I also learned of the “White Rose,” a painfully small group that tried arousing their fellow Germans against Nazi crimes. They quoted the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte: “Thou shalt act as if on thee and thy deed depended the fate of all Germany and thou alone must answer for it.” But this principle of accountable followership obviously failed horribly. It was not sufficiently woven into the fabric of the culture. How many other cultures would also fail if this trait were put to a severe test? How many are failing the test now?

In every age there are leaders and their followers who commit atrocities. At this writing, many people were mystified by the mass killings in Bosnia and by their feelings of helplessness to affect the situation. Why do we feel helpless to influence these events we decry? At least partially it is because the farther away we are from a situation in which power is being abused, the harder it is for us to influence it. Yet the closer we are to a situation in which power is being abused, the more we are at risk if we try to change it, and the abuser turns on us. Thus, the people nearest to the event often let it grow unchecked. And the people farther away wring their hands.

Proximity and courage are the critical variables in the prevention of the abuse of power. With these variables in mind, I have written this book for and about the followers who serve closely to a leader. While it might speak most dramatically to the inner circle of a highly placed leader, the principles apply to the close followers of a leader in any size or type of organization, and at any level of the organization. I focus on the courage required to take advantage of proximity, as only with courage can we act quickly and early to ensure that the leader’s power will be used well.

If we practice being courageous in our mundane interactions with leaders, we will be prepared if one day we are called upon to display extraordinary courage in our relationship with a leader. By weaving the principle of accountable followership into our culture at every level, the fabric will become strong enough to resist the periodic attempts of individual leaders to emboss it with their own martial coat of arms.

But it is not just at the extremes of human activity that these principles apply. The fabric is formed and reinforced in every organized activity of society from the youth group to the workplace, from the church to the military, from the nonprofit to the corporation, from the local council to the national government.

As a teenager, I experienced the damage caused by the strong head of a youth organization who kept it alive through his dedication and energy, and simultaneously traumatized it through unchecked verbal and sexual abuse. In the socially idealistic sixties and human-potential movements of the seventies, I worked with groups dedicated to reforming the world and watched in dismay when their leadership’s own use of power ceased to compare favorably to practices in the world they were seeking to change. As a management consultant to U.S. senators and representatives, I observe the difficulty many have in maintaining an atmosphere in which their staffs are willing to give them honest feedback about their leadership style. As a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and U.S. federal agencies, I see the inordinate weight given to a senior executive’s slightest request, without regard to the effect it has on serving the customers who are supposed to drive the quality revolution.

The most capable followers in the world will fail if they gripe about their leaders but don’t help them improve. As a follower, I am working to sustain the courage it requires to be honest in my relationships with leaders so I can tell them what they need to hear if they are to use their gifts effectively despite their inevitable human flaws. I now see that at those times when I have failed to provide a leader with needed perspective and balance, it was not for lack of perception but for lack of courage and skill. It was I who needed to change and grow as much as the leader. By not doing so I, along with the rest of the group, paid the price of dysfunctional leadership.

Like many followers, I am also a leader in my own right, and I am working to transform my own leadership attitudes that quash the creativity and participation of my staff. This doesn’t come easy to me. Though I may wince, I find myself grateful when a courageous follower skillfully and tactfully confronts me and helps me visualize changes I might make to better serve the organization.

I first conceived the idea for this book while reading M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie. I am indebted to him for raising the issue of irresponsible followership in his graphic analysis of the shameful massacre and cover up at My Lai by American soldiers in Vietnam. It framed my long search for understanding of the subject. This book is the fruit of my informal but deeply concerned and protracted observations, reading, and reflection on the leader-follower relationship.

Though the approaches and techniques I describe in the book for changing our relationships with leaders are often simple, they are offered with the understanding that changing ourselves or others is rarely easy. I have tried to emphasize the need for compassion and mutual respect in our relationships as followers and leaders.

Please be a courageous reader. This book is designed as a guide and a resource; don’t follow it in a rote manner. While I encourage you to read the introduction and first chapter to get oriented to the subject, not all the remaining parts will be equally relevant to your current situation. Use the subchapter headings to locate the parts that are important to you.

This work is based on my personal experiences with both men and women in the leader role and the follower role. In my treatment of any specific issue, if I was not able to keep it gender-neutral, I somewhat arbitrarily chose one gender for the leader role and one for the follower role and stuck to that combination for that chapter. I must acknowledge, however, that gender issues sometimes complicate the already sensitive dynamics in the leader-follower relationship, and I have not attempted to deal with them in this work.

I am also aware of the inherent cultural biases that may render the model I present less relevant outside a contemporary middle-class, North American environment. I hope that some of the principles I explore will transcend the limits of my specific culture and speak to the broader human condition we all share.

Ultimately, the work that must be done to create new standards of relationship between followers and leaders begins within you and the experiences of your life. I invite you to explore this subject in your life as I am exploring it in mine.

Ira Chaleff
Washington, DC