What Followers Want In Their Leaders

All companies need the right individuals with the right competencies (e.g., soft and hard skills) to advance the capabilities of the firm. From whom do you seek input when determining leadership development efforts — leaders or followers?

Most organizations backtrack from desired results to identify what performance contributed to those results. From this, key competencies, roles and responsibilities are established and are relied upon to direct leadership development. If the goal is to direct expected behavior toward expected results, this approach has merit. But, if the goal is to create an engaged culture that nudges discretionary effort to deliver breakthrough performance, leadership development takes on a new meaning.

The natural tendency is to profile a desirable leader based on input from executives to front-line supervisors. This is, indeed, valuable. If you have yet to identify the leadership expectations of those currently in leadership positions, your efforts will be misaligned. But, what about the followers? Do leaders know what followers are motivated by?

In The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, authors James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner identified the following four characteristics of great leaders: honest, competent, forward-looking and inspiring. In Why Should Anyone Be Led By You by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, the desires of followers were: community, authenticity, significance and excitement. A Gallup Research Team, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, asked more than 10,000 followers what the most influential leaders do to contribute to their lives. The answers were provided in their book, Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow, and were listed as: trust, compassion, stability and hope.

Interestingly, none had anything to do with results. Rather, all have more intrinsic, emotional classifications and a sense of "feeling." So, is it better to focus leadership development on facilitating an increase in organizational feeling and emotional intelligence, or on knowledge and behavior that will contribute to business results? The answer is both if you desire a culture that wants to contribute to results, rather than one made up of individuals who feel obligated to...

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Shawn M. Galloway is the President and COO of ProAct Safety. He writes (and tweets:@safetyculture) about his consulting work leading organizations across all major industries to achieve and sustain excellence in their performance and culture. His articles, books, blog, podcasts and videos can be accessed here: https://proactsafety.com/insights