Followership

“Thanks Coach”

That’s a quote from my son, after every practice he’s ever attended. Hockey, Baseball, Cross country, Track & Field, Chess. Yes, you read that right, Chess.  He plays several sports competently and competes like his life depends on it, but Chess is for sure “his thing”. Despite all of his other activities, he’s nationally ranked in Chess for his age, and works harder at it than many adults I know work at their profession. Kinda amazing kid eh? I could go on and on for pages about him with a case of proud papa syndrome, but that isn’t my point today. I initially reminded him to say thank you to his coaches when he was 8 years old, and the habit built; now I don’t remind him at all. 

What I find missing from a lot of failed relationships with athletes/mentees/mentors is similar: There is a lack good “followership”. 

His coaches notice, and have pointed it out to me, to my wife, to the team at end of season banquets.  His fellow teammates take notice as well, selecting him best leader of his cross country team. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the usual middle school popularity vote.  He was new to the district and certainly wasn’t the best athlete on his squad. 

Over the years I have coached hockey, baseball, cross country, chess and I know I notice any acknowledgement of gratitude on the part of my young charges.  I have had former athletes recognize me as “coach” out around town years after I last remember seeing them and thank me then for lessons learned, help given, love of a game fostered. As I reflect and talk about this with my son, I began to explore principles of good leadership through the lens of a coach.  I usually use the definition of a “coach” as a person who provides feedback to enhance performance, but the typical sports coach also teaches (provides feedback to enhance skill/knowledge) and the truly successful ones are supportive emotionally. Many will engage another aspect of mentoring, sponsorship, by giving someone a call up to a new team, vouching to another coach to take the player on their team, or using them as a sub.  What I find missing from a lot of failed relationships with athletes/mentees/mentors is similar: There is a lack good “followership”. 

Just as a mentor must have an honest and insightful knowledge of their protégé to develop and foster their growth, so must a protégé have an honest picture of their mentor’s strengths and weaknesses.

Even though you are reading this remotely in time and distance from when I wrote it, I sense a visceral reaction to my last point: fret not, I have it too. I’ll state my first key feature of good followership: good followership is not blind. Just as a mentor must have an honest and insightful knowledge of their protégé to develop and foster their growth, so must a protégé have an honest picture of their mentor’s strengths and weaknesses. Blindly following a toxic mentor, coach, teacher, leader, sponsor can only end badly.  

However, it is folly to ride the pendulum as it swings too far in the opposite direction: by being aloof, arrogant, and so stubbornly independent that the protégé refuses all feedback and direction. Frankly, this smacks of a lack of humility even if it accomplishes the avoidance of blindly following a mentor.  Ironically, poor followership and poor leadership are perfectly in sync in this feature: without humility on both sides, the mentor/mentee relationship is doomed. I write this with no sense of irony – I have been part of the success and part of the failure on both sides of the relationship.

We often approach the mentor/mentee dyad in pure “receiver” mode. It is the mentor’s job to fix, mold, develop the mentee, as if the pursuit of your optimal potential is passive, and all you are missing is the “secret knowledge” to achieve your best. This is, of course, beyond silly.

Some thoughts on how to manage this, both from the mentor and protégé perspective. First and foremost, acknowledge that followership is a skill that must be learned, developed and practiced.  It is not natural to automatically and effortlessly humble oneself. It takes effort to seek an opinion, thought, perspective outside of one’s own; further effort is required to consider that perspective, evaluate it and incorporate the feedback into a change from current state to future self. Knowing this, the tip to improve the practice is like any other: observe your behavior regarding followership skills, seek observation from a trusted advisor of the same and evaluate the feedback like you would any other skill. Before you grouse: yes, that is easier said than done; however, if you have a mentor you have de facto accepted the fact that you could benefit from additional perspectives. Getting better at incorporating those insights is dependent on the same realization that getting better at followership requires: humility and insight are the keys to unlocking your future better self. The biggest stumbling block in incorporating followership skills is that visceral reaction mentioned previously: we don’t expect that being a protégé is definitionally as much work as it is. We often approach the mentor/mentee dyad in pure “receiver” mode. It is the mentor’s job to fix, mold, develop the mentee, as if the pursuit of your optimal potential is passive, and all you are missing is the “secret knowledge” to achieve your best. This is, of course, beyond silly. Self-improvement and reaching a future state with more potential requires insight to figure out where you are now, experience and knowledge to help build a path to get there, feedback to maintain yourself on the path to your future self; additionally it requires effort and perseverance to actually walk the path.  The mentor can recognize where you are, help you plot a path based on their own experience and their knowledge of many others that have trod the path, and provide the feedback and course correction to assist their protégé along the journey.  But, they can’t walk the path for you. Again, this is natural as a misconception, and it gets amplified by popular media and a cultural fascination with experts, self-appointed gurus.  For crying out loud, you are reading this blog: is it expected or unexpected that I routinely point out that despite being an expert at a few things, and an experienced mentor 1) I don’t know everything 2) the main determinant of the outcome in self change is individual attitude and effort. The process you follow (despite what all the online guitar education products I’ve vetted recently) is vital but ultimately secondary.  Where does this natural reaction come from? I mentioned cultural influences in popular media as well as the deluge of salesmanship tactics on our social media feeds, but there is another component as well. Some of the tendencies in followership are generational.  

The key is recognizing that there may be a difference in baselines between mentor and mentee, and that the natural human tendency is to presume that “everyone thinks like me”.

There have been major generational shifts over the past 60 years in attitudes to leadership. Without going into a “back in my day” rant, or risking getting off track with excessive specifics some context for this section: Of course, these are not homogenous attitudes. Of course, there is wide variability among generational attitudes and identification beyond the strict limits of arbitrarily assigned birth dates.  With all of that context, one could still be reasonably suspected of being obtuse if they thought that there is no general difference in how the WWII generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millenials and Gen Z perceive and baseline respond to leadership and authority.  Probably best is to be aware of these potential  differences and explore with your mentor or your protégé what their baseline tendency is. Do they blindly follow authority as a general approach? Do they resist authority if they don’t have the same values, and follow authority (somewhat blindly) if the values are congruent?  Do they give the benefit of the doubt at the outset, but dump the leader if that trust is violated and make it nearly impossible to re-earn that trust?  Do they feel that the leader must earn their trust first, before any followership is offered? Note I have not added any value judgement to these attitudes. They each facilitate and hinder the mentor/mentee dyad  and accomplishment of work tasks/projects. The key is recognizing that there may be a difference in baselines between mentor and mentee, and that the natural human tendency is to presume that “everyone thinks like me”. If both halves of the dyad approach leadership/followership differently, but presume the other half sees it like they do, it is a set up for a difference in expectations and reality.  This is a pile of conflict gunpowder ready to have the gasoline of misunderstanding poured on it as accelerant and lit ablaze. (Metaphor…)

Take home? If you’ve read anything on this site, it may sound familiar: don’t avoid the elephant in the room. Step back to get it in better view. Realize it’s an elephant. Name it. Take it for a walk or a ride. Feed it peanuts. Open, honest communication between mentor and protégé within the context of a relationship with trust and forgiveness addresses all the skills a protégé wants help with, and all the generativity that a mentor wishes to impart. Once you name followership as one of those skills, it becomes obvious that it can be addressed the same way as all the others. My partner on this site is fond of imparting the following “If the relationship is right, you can say anything…if the relationship isn’t right, there’s nothing that can be said”