Good follower = Good Leader

A friend of mine recently told me that if you are out to lunch with a client and they are nice to you, but mean to the waiter, that person is not a nice person. There is some wisdom in those words. In other words, I believe he was saying it is possible for a person to be deceitfully nice to your face, while all the while having sour intentions or an ulterior motive towards you behind your back. Can the same be said about followers and leaders? Aristotle made the quote, "He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader". This quote is usually pointed towards leadership meaning that every leader is also a follower, but we can also change it around to look at it through the eyes of a follower. Can we as followers have ulterior motives within our organization? Can we be withholding important information from our leaders to watch them struggle with a decision? There is something intrinsic within us that wants to watch the power of man be squashed, causing our leaders to fall. There is something of a sick, cynical entertainment what wants to say through our intentions, "See, I told you so." It comes down to a basic principle in followership development, "Without followers, there are no leaders." We say that we want to be used within our organization to make changes and that no one will listen to us. Is this because we are not acting like leaders? Are there characteristic traits about us that show an immaturity in the way we handle obstacles that come our way? Do we find pleasure in the struggles of our leaders over us, as to paralyse us from being effective followers?

"He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader" is not just a principle for leaders, but also for the followers that are under leaders; a call to action, if you will, to act as leaders in the place that we are found so that our leadership ability will shine through our followership. We can have all the education, training, and skills to be a better leader than those over us, but if we lack the maturity to use our leadership skills in the places that we are at, we are missing opportunities to not only be effective in the cause of the mission within the organization, but also for others to see those traits within us, utilizing our skills as a leader in our followership position. Let us not be like the individual who is nice to a business partner but mean to a servant. Let us not be nice to our leaders face and then turn around and withhold information from them or slander them every chance we can get. This is not a leadership trait. Instead, be who you are all of the time. If you are not a good follower, admit that you are not and then seek help in developing those skills. If you want to be a good follower, start by living the mission of your organization in whatever capacity you are presented. This is where most of our struggles lie. We see our leaders that do not even do that (so we perceive). We can not change them, but we can change us. Instead of saying, "Why can't my leaders figure out what is going on here?" we can instead ask, "What can I do to help my leader be a better leader?" This usually clears up most conflicts. Try it today.