Why Good Leaders Must Also Be Good Followers

Several years ago, I sat in a meeting where the public works director, consultant team, wastewater treatment plant operator, and I were reviewing a proposed treatment plant improvement. Like everyone else in the room, I accepted an assumption that seemed reasonable and was ready to move on.

Then the plant operator asked a question that challenged our thinking. Drawing on years of operating the facility, he explained why our assumption deserved another look.

That single question changed the direction of the discussion and ultimately led to a better, lower-cost improvement for the city.

What stayed with me was not simply that the plant operator spoke up. It was that everyone else in the room, including me, had overlooked an important piece of the puzzle.

The operator contributed because he understood the mission, took ownership of the outcome, and shared his expertise. The leaders in the room contributed in a different but equally important way: they listened, reconsidered their assumptions, and changed course based on better information.

That meeting reinforced something I have come to believe over the course of my career: leadership and followership are not opposites. They are complementary roles that require many of the same behaviors.

Leadership and Followership Go Hand in Hand

Historically, ‘followership’ was associated with loyalty and obedience, while leadership was associated with directing others. Today's public organizations require something different. Local governments solve increasingly complex problems and no one person, regardless of title, has all the answers.

That reality means all of us move between leading and following every day. Elected officials rely on staff expertise. Department directors depend on supervisors and frontline employees. Employees collaborate across departments and regularly influence decisions beyond their formal responsibilities.

The strongest team members are often those who know when to lead, when to support, and when to respectfully challenge others when in service of a shared purpose.

Behaviors That Strengthen Organizations

In my experience, effective leaders and effective followers share the following four important behaviors:

• They understand the mission. They focus on what will best serve the community rather than protecting their own ideas or authority.
• They take ownership. In the treatment plant meeting, the operator spoke up because he felt responsible for helping the team reach the best decision, even though the final decision was not in his hands. The public works director, consultants, and I shared that same responsibility by ensuring we considered the best available information before moving forward with a recommendation.
• They contribute ideas. Organizations improve when people at every level are encouraged to share their knowledge and experience. Innovation rarely comes from one office or one title.
• They ask questions and remain open to learning. Better decisions emerge when assumptions are tested respectfully, and people are willing to change their minds as new information becomes available.

None of these behaviors requires positional authority. They require commitment to the organization's success.

Why This Matters

In the 2013 book Turn the Ship Around!, former U.S. Navy submarine captain L. David Marquet describes transforming the USS Santa Fe from a struggling submarine into a highly effective organization by replacing traditional command-and-control leadership with a leader-leader model that gives people authority and ownership.

His crew performed better when sailors at every level were expected to think critically, take ownership, and contribute to better decisions rather than simply carry out orders.

The same principle applies in local government, where better outcomes depend on people throughout the organization sharing responsibility for the mission.

Marquet’s central lesson is that great leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders by giving people authority and ownership.

Conclusion

Leadership is not simply about directing others, and followership is not simply about supporting leaders: Both are about helping the organization make better decisions in service to the community.

In upcoming blogs, I will explore how these principles apply to creating a shared vision and mission, building teams, aligning organizational culture, decision-making, and developing the next generation of public service leaders.