Personal development and self-awareness are two critical aspects of both our leadership and followership. If we don’t know who we are, who we can become, and make some effort to get there, the quality of our contributions, in any role or under any title, will always be something less than what they could be. Continue reading “New Free Resource: Leadership Self-Evaluation”
One of my favorite activities when working with groups to inspire thinking about leadership and followership is to do some simple brainstorming to consider the various qualities, characteristics, responsibilities, and expectations that we attach to these two different people/roles. And to compare and contrast those lists.
In order to facilitate that, we’ve created a simple worksheet that you can use for your own personal reflection and group dialogue. Continue reading “New Free Resource: Leader-Follower Lists”
If you’ve tracked with this blog over the years, or spent time with the Embracing Followership books, you’ll likely have noticed that there are several significant threads which continually arise as we explore following with excellence.
Relationship and Communication are two of these essential themes. If you flip through the Subject Index at the back of the book, and use the number of page references as one indicator of most significant ideas, do you know which topic comes in as next most important? Continue reading “New Free Resource: Surfacing Expectations”
While blog posts are valuable for presenting ideas and helping to create perspective, ultimately one’s journey of excellent followership and personal growth is best served by having concrete opportunities for growing in self-awareness and then making an effort to “self-revelate”—to share with others (your peers & superiors) who you are, what you value, what you have to offer.
Resources for individual reflection and group conversation are one way to facilitate those occasions for self-discovery and self-disclosure. Continue reading “New Free Resource: Enneagram Profile”
Many of us regularly describe the work of personal development and growth as a “journey.” One thing that’s true of any trip is that it begins somewhere. For a GPS app to be able to plot your route to your destination, it has to be able to determine your current location.
Similarly, as we engage in the work of change and transformation, knowing where we are currently is essential for identifying where we’d like to go, the best course of action to take, the appropriate vehicles to use, as well as some of the challenges that might harass us while we’re trying to get there.
Continue reading “New Free Resource: Followership Self-Evaluation”
In our previous two posts, we looked at trust and clarity as two essential aims that a distance leader can undertake in order to encourage excellent followership among remote followers. For our final exploration in this series, we consider feedback. Continue reading “Enhancing Excellent Followership as a Distance Leader: Part 3 (feedback)”
We looked previously at how a distance leader can establish trust as a core aspect of encouraging excellent followership. We now turn to the importance of clarity.
Throughout Embracing Followership, the thread of communication is an essential component of the leader-follower dynamic. Certainly if that dynamic is to be maintained across a geographic distance, the investment in communication becomes all the more critical, and the leader must be intentional to address the particular challenges to be found within distance communication. Continue reading “Enhancing Excellent Followership as a Distance Leader: Part 2 (clarity)”
I wrote previously about the challenges inherent in the common contemporary dynamic of leaders and their followers often working together without being co-located (see “Does Distance Leadership Beget Virtual Followership?“). How do we follow well amidst the temptations and challenges of laboring out of site of our superior (and our colleagues)?
This question also needs to be examined from the other side of relationship: what can distance leaders do in order to facilitate following with excellence? What are the unique challenges and opportunities that they can address in order to make the most of being remote? Continue reading “Enhancing Excellent Followership as a Distance Leader: Part 1 (trust)”
As an American living in the UK for the last 6 years, I have ample opportunity to appreciate that—despite shared history and plentiful similarities—our two cultures are clearly distinct. The truth of us being “two peoples separated by a common language” is readily apparent, but there are many other stereotypes that characterize us as undeniably different in posture and perspective.
The British have an incredible comfort with queueing (waiting in line). It’s said that even if no one else is around, a lone Brit will still manage to form a queue! “Queue jumping” (cutting in line) is a major cultural faux pas, which draws uncharacteristically audible tuts of disapproval from mainstream cultural adherents.
On the other hand, Americans are not generally known as patient people. Instant results and responses, fast-paced lives, demanding words, action-oriented, impulsive, hot-heads…waiting on line is not generally high on any American’s list of preferred ways of handling a situation.
Although I don’t think that the British comfort with queueing is a testimony to some sort of natural virtue of patience, this point of divergence does highlight a perspective that appears across many cultures, encapsulated in the dictum “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Continue reading “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way”
At the heart of excellent followership is relationship—with one’s leader and with one’s peers. And at the heart of relationship is communication.
If we’re going to follow well, if we’re going to contribute well, we have participate in—and contribute toward—a positive communication environment.
The challenge comes in that each member of a group will tend to have personal preferences that define what it means for them to engage in a positive, satisfying dialogue. Continue reading “New Free Resource: Satisfying Communication”
I recall hearing a little phrase while growing up. “Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
The sentiment is sweet: if you’re able to give yourself to a task/role that you’re passionate about and it can serve as a means of livelihood, then you will escape the drudgery that many adults face who perform a job merely to earn an income in order to survive.
Behind that little phrase, though, is a deeply-held value. Most people would rather that things feel easy. We don’t want our occupation to be hard. Get in, get out, go on vacation…with the least effort, bruising, or discomfort along the way. Continue reading “Is your job easy? Do you want it to be?”
I enjoy watching political dramas from time to time (The West Wing, Madam Secretary) and have made an observation: the people that are the most important tend to be the least accessible. Continue reading “Important Or Accessible? Why Not Both/And”
