How To Identify And Create Good Followers?

Agile and Scrum / By

There is a link between leadership and team management. A good leader possess many qualities to set an example for his team, so good leaders generally have many followers. If a leader grooms himself, it results in better management and better performance. And how is followership related to it? If leadership is important to performance, followership is important to leadership. Leaders are concerned with strategic vision, so they use both, power and politics. Power is the ability to get the work done by a group of people. It is also the ability to influence their behavior. Politics imparts pressure on the team irrespective of the fact whether people agree with their decision or not. Leaders understand the difference between power and politics and when to employ each technique. Good leaders have committed team members who believe in the vision of the leader. Leaders set direction and time frames and have the ability to attract good talent to work for them.

Good followers have many qualities but how to identify good followers

  • Those who use their own discretion– Good followers do not follow blindly they use their own discretion before following their leaders. The first differentiate between a directive given by their leader on how to proceed and a directive that is truly wrong. All of us are answerable to our organization and it is our duty to take care; indiscretion is not care, it is careless.
  • Beware of flatterers– If you are always praised by your team members, for all your tasks and accomplishment, try to differentiate between the genuine praise, forced praise and false praise. The difference between forced and false praise is that, some subordinates are very fearful and they love to do what they see the majority is doing, such kind is not dangerous as they are the ones who neither likes nor dislikes you. But be very careful from flatterers, as their intensions can be dangerous and difficult to figure out.
  • Look for Honest and hardworking team players- Good followers are honest in justifying their roles and responsibilities and are good workers. They are self-directed and motivated who always tries to give their 100%. It is your responsibility as a leader to create an environment that permits these qualities so that they can make best out of it. Remember bad workers can never be good followers.
  • Prove yourself– Be fair with all the team members and try to avoid favoritism. Show enough good judgment as a follower and you usually end up getting a shot at being the good leader. 
  • People who are talented and actually serious for growth in career.  The follower cannot follow properly unless they are serious and skilled at the task assigned to them.  It is the responsibility of the leader to assure that followers possess the required skills and things should not go wrong because of incompetency of any team member. In such cases they should blame themselves, not the follower.  Blaming the team member for lack of certain skill set is a sign of poor leadership.
  • Some people give lesser priority to work ethics, they feel work must be done on time, at every cost. But those who not only work ethically but point out their leader in case they find anything not in line with ethics are the actual heroes. Good leaders should be grateful for constructive and honest feedbacks from their team members.

Good leaders inspire a vision and get things done through others by earning loyalty, respect, and cooperation from team members. They set the course and lead the way. They are directive in their approach and allow for plenty of feedback and input. If you, as a leader, succeed in forming a team of good followers then no one can stop you from achieving your goals and  satisfying the needs of all the stakeholder.

About Dharmalingam N

Dharmalingam.N holds a master degree in Business Administration and writes on a wide range of topics ranging from technology to business analysis. He has a background in Relationship Management. Some of the topics he has written about and that have been published include; project management, business analysis and customer engagement.

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