Great leadership is about more than achieving extraordinary results.
Leaders who value long-term success place the utmost importance on bringing people along as they attain those results.
Creating followership is the other side of the leadership coin. Without it, leaders won’t find the ultimate prize of credibility, respect, and trust necessary for sustainable performance.
For truly exceptional leaders, followership holds just as much weight as actual results, performance, and accomplishments.
Leaders who can create extraordinary followership are rare.
Those searching for masterful followership leaders can easily spot them by observing how team members interact with them. Team members don’t just feel differently when interacting with a followership leader. They feel differently about themselves.
The belief such a leader has in them produces a boost of confidence they rarely experience. Not surprisingly, they want to be around a leader who makes them feel that way. They work to create a deep connection with that leader.
In fact, they perceive a leader with such skills as loyal to them. They return the favor with devotion.
Over time, their sense of connection to a followership leader is so strong that they would do anything for them. Expressions like “run through walls” come to mind. If, by chance, the leader finds a new opportunity elsewhere, they naturally want to follow.
Other signs that signal a leader has exceptional followership skills include team members who ask them for personal advice, a greater willingness for team members to accept changes that impact them, and a higher work ethic, engagement, and effort through which team members show they will not let the leader down.
Followership leaders receive offers to help with their most difficult tasks. These team members will go the extra mile with any assignment.
This is all because followership leaders have learned what it takes to listen to, validate, include, and make others feel special by the way they behave and interact.
The skills of followership are worth the effort for any leader to master. Results are so much bigger and more sustainable with a heavy dose of followership.
