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En provenance du cours de Rice University
Personal Leadership Development Planning and Leading High Performing Teams
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Module 3 - Launching Creative Project Teams
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David Van KleeckProfessor in the Practice of Engineering Leadership
Rice Center for Engineering Leadership
We spend all of our time in the specialization talking about leadership.
That's because, quite frankly that's what gets the attention of employers and
managers.
Listing yourself as a good follower doesn't get a lot of attention
on your resume.
But it's worth taking a few minutes to talk about the role of followers and
how important they are to the effectiveness of team.
So let's take a few minutes to look at the role of followers.
Throughout your career, you will always be a follower in one form or
another even when you are occupying leadership roles.
The chances are that you're going to be a follower much more often that you
are a leader.
Without leaders or without followers, leaders don't exist and
leaders can't fulfill their roles in the organization.
When we look at the desirable qualities of a follower,
they're going to look very similar to those attributes that we've given to
leaders throughout this specialization.
Most importantly, good leaders will know how to develop good followers and
good followers will help them in that process.
Robert Kelley in his article embrace a followers in a Harvard Business Review
described different kinds of followers.
He first described what he would call the qualities of effective followers.
Self-management was the term that he used to describe independence,
when we think about the language of Steven Kobby,
it meres that very closely of being independent.
It also follows very closely the language of Peter Senge,
the fifth discipline work that he did of describing self-mastery.
Good followers are committed to the actions that are going to be done within
the team.
They have energy to devote to accomplishing a goals of the organization.
They have the skills and aptitudes needed to accomplish the task for the team.
And lastly, they have the courage to
stand up to authority when it's necessary and the leader needs
feedback on either ethical or technical decisions that might come out of the team.
Kelley went on to describe five different kinds of followers, and
he plotted them on an axis of activity versus independence.
If we look at the horizontal axis here that would be considered the activity axis
and the vertical one would be independents.
He described first of all those who are low active, low independence,
as being very passive, and as sheep in the organization.
The people in this category require a significant amount of attention from
the manager, because they are looking for direction in which way to go.
He described the highly active but
low independence people in the organization as yes people.
These followers typically demonstrate the characteristics of good followers except
that they lack the courage to stand up to authority when it's necessary.
These he referred to as the yes people in the organization.
Midway on the activity and independent scale, Kelley described
the group of people who will follow once others have taken the lead.
They are not naturally inclined to seize the initiative and move on.
He called these the fairly pragmatic followers in the organization.
He then described those that are high on the independent scale but
low on the activity scale.
This tend to be the people that he called alienated and frequently in
the organization are those that demonstrate passive-aggressive behaviors.
They can be very pessimistic and
they can become obstacles to the performance of the group.
Lastly, we have the fifth category of followers that Kelley described as
exemplary.
These are the followers in the organization that demonstrate
all four of the characteristics that he attributed to good followers.
Self-management, commitment, competence and courage.
The followers in this category tend to be able to stand up to authority,
they are recognized by their peers as having credibility and confidence.
I would add a sixth category to this particular box
that I mark with this gold star.
These would be the people that are not only exemplary but
exhibit what Steven Covey would call interdependence.
They are able to get work done within through others in as synergistic manner.
So it's worthwhile asking,
can a follower move from one box to another in this matrix?
I feel that as a leader, yes, that any follower
can be with the right coaching and counselling move from one box to another.
I think that's obvious from some of the examples that I have seen in my own
experience, where an exemplary employee can become frustrated because
of poor management, poor leadership that they observed and
actually move from that top right box to the alienated box.
The reverse is obviously possible with the right performance, coaching and
counselling.
In that regard, it worth asking the question,
how can leaders interact with followers to make those changes?
What are their expectations?
So let's look first at the exemplary employee.
So let's take a look now at what constitutes an exemplary follower?
What did they do that distinguish them from other followers?
First of all, they tend to present a very consistent picture of how they perform.
They show that independence,
they show that they develop networks across the organization, and
they demonstrate that courage to stand up to authority when necessary to ensure that
good decisions and ethical decisions are made within the organization.
Secondly, they're exemplary because
their goals align with those of the organization.
They are strong advocates for the mission of the organization and
acting ways that clearly support the direction that the team is going.
So how can a leader influence and
encourage the followers in their organization?
The first is going to be to know how to coach followers so
that they can best contribute to the team, that they can align their
goals in such a way that they reinforce the direction the team is going.
That comes through setting goals appropriately, and
we described that previously, and it also comes from coaching and counseling.
The leader also encourages followers to help him make good decisions.
Whether they're ethical or technical choices that need to
be made within the team, the leader encourages followers to act in ways that
they contribute their ideas to the progress of the team.
The leader encourages followers to extend their networks to broaden their
understanding of the organization and ways that they can contribute.
This helps access needed resources when
the team comes to solve problems creatively.
And awareness of the organization will help team members bring those resources to
bear to solve problems when it's appropriate.
The leader will want to encourage his or
her staff to have a realistic view of what the leader's capabilities are.
The leader will also want to ensure that they create an environment
where the followers are free to offer their opinions,
to offer their views and perspectives.
And have an open conversation environment, that means that it is okay for
the follower to disagree occasionally.
Now that we have examined the roles of followers,
let's keep those in mind as we examine ways to launch creative teams.
And ways that we can motivate and
encourage those teams to become high performing ones.
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