Are you a right follower?

Managerial roles are always misinterpreted. Functional expertise is considered while hiring the person, his experience is also considered. But other dimensions required are not considered. Every manager has four areas to perform. These are as under:

Functional expert: We hire people for their knowledge and skills. Their functional expertise is important. But at managerial position, employee has to play different roles. If the person is in finance, he is expected to be the expert in finance and it is applicable in all functions.

Administrator: Managers need to plan activities, assign tasks to sub-ordinates and get the job done. Staffing, planning, coordinating and executing are his common duties. Sometimes, he sanctions leaves, plan his manpower and archives his targets. This is administrative role he plays.

Most of the times above two roles are considered. Managers are expected to perform above two roles effectively and they are evaluated based on above dimensions only. However other two dimensions and roles of the managerial disposition are always ignored that these two dimensions are leadership and followership.

Leadership: Leadership is important and must be focused well, but we should also understand the personality limitations of leadership. At specific roles, always try to develop the person as leader. Coaching and mentoring help a lot here.

Followership: “You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.”

Most of the time we give the weightage to the leadership, but followership is grossly neglected.  In the organization everybody has to follow certain things. Managers follow top managements philosophy. Everybody in the organization is independent and also accountable for each other. Juniors (by position) are more dependent and also accountable to seniors (by positions). Hence juniors are expected to follow the strategy, vision, mission and instructions, directions thereby.

Even if the person is not manager, most of the times he is expected to play the role of follower. And hence right perspective to the followership is needed.

Kelly and Robert (1992) explained in details this followership model which I really like.

This is two dimension- model for followership behaviour. There are active and passive employees and other hand they are dependent & uncritical and independent & critical. We have the choice what type of behaviour we would like to model.  Based on this there are four types of followers.

1. Sheep: Haven’t you seen the people who are like sheep? They don’t use their brain. They are passive and uncritical. They do not play an active role at all. They simply comply with any order given. They are not even Yes Boss people. They are disengaged. “you tell what I should do” is the common reaction from them.

2. Yes People: Only one good thing is these people are active. They are energetic but don’t use their brain. They are active and uncritical. You must have seen the people who readily carry out orders uncritically. These people’s behaviour can be dangerous if orders contradict standards.  These are the people who always say what they think leaders want to hear.

3. Survivors: These are very political guys, always ready to save the skin. They are right in the middle. Rarely committed to the task. They are mediocre performers clogging the arteries of an organization

4. Alienated followers: One good thing is that these people are critical thinkers but don’t take in right perspective. They are disengaged and passive in nature. They will ask questions, challenge and always critical but will not offer any support.

5. Effective followers: What we want in the organization are effective followers. These are potential leaders and experts. They are very active and other side they are also critical thinkers. They ask questions, challenge to the conventional though but will come forwards for the active support. They give the right solution to the problem. Actually ideal followers. They reflect on organizational tasks and even not hesitant to bring concerns to leader/bosses. They are energetic and proactive. They know their own limitations and their own territory but do not hesitate to go extra mile if required.

Now you may have understood the different types of followership. Where you will put yourself and then your team?

Throw thy labels….

When I was kid, different guests used to visit our home. Most of the guests used to interact with me. They used to ask me different questions and would give me money for candies and chocolates. They would tell my parents that I am smart boy… In school, I was, off course, first -bencher and reasonably good in academics. Once during our examination, some students were caught while copying the answers from cheats, they had bought. Teacher scolded those students and pointed towards me, saying, “See that student, he studies, works hard and gets numbers and you…? Learn from him…”

My parents, relatives, friends, teacher and people in society labeled me, smart boy, good boy, intelligent boy etc. etc…. These positive labels given by different people, made me more positive and responsible. This also helped me to create my positive “self image.” This does not mean that I was always perceived good boy. I was also naughty, sometimes made blunders; I also tried to be bad boy in schools along with other friends. In seventh, we demanded that that school should allow students to wear trousers instead of short pants. However our PT teacher and headmaster were not in favour of the same. During this, I also protested against the headmaster and was out of the school for two days. Next day my class -teacher complained to my parents. I still remember the punishment which I don’t want to reveal now.

But these bad experiences neither made me bad nor people labeled me bad. Positive labels were more prominent than negative labels.

      

Your self image plays imperative role in your success. Self image is your own opinion about yourself. This is created based on your understanding of perceptions of different people about you. I am very happy and feel lucky that these positives made my personality positive and helped me to build my positive “self image.”      

However, there are incidences where people, teacher, patents are more negative towards their children. They pressurize the children to do lot many things and if they fail, label them negatively. Our personality is the “shop” of these different labels and tags. If Raju, does not win the running race, his friends would label him that he is looser. Recently one of the parents of student studying in class 3^rd was summoned by the teacher and was told that their kid is slow learner. How teacher can decide and label the child is slow learner? Parents told teacher, “look, my kid had done well in his earlier school, if he is not picking fast; it is your teaching problem and at home we have not seen any issues with his learning.” Parent may be over protective, but their explanation was right; because the comments of parents would have been more important to the kid. This positive statement would have been helped him to create the positive self image.

People make perceptions about you and they tag you based on their understanding. Their perception may not be necessarily right and hence you should not worry about their tag. This happens in home, schools and even offices. Your seniors may have their own understanding about you, sometimes negative and really you should focus on positive perception to build the good self image.

The need here is to keep good labels and throw all thy negative labels.  

Change our vision

There was a millionaire who was bothered by severe eye pain.

He consulted so many physicians and was getting his treatment done. He did not stop consulting galaxy of medical experts; he consumed heavy loads of drugs and underwent hundreds of injections. But the ache persisted with great vigour than before.

At last a monk who has supposed to be an expert in treating such patients was called for by the millionaire. The monk understood his problem and said that for sometime he should concentrate only on green colours and not to fall his eyes on any other colours.

The millionaire got together a group of painters and purchased barrels of green color and directed that every object his eye was likely to fall to be painted in green colour just as the monk had directed.

When the monk came to visit him after few days, the millionaire's servants ran with buckets of green paints and poured on him since he was in red dress, lest their master not see any other colour and his eye ache would come back.

Hearing this monk laughed said "If only you had purchased a pair of green spectacles, worth just a few rupees, you could have saved these walls and trees and pots and all other articles and also could have saved a large share of his fortune.

You cannot paint the world green." Let us change our vision and the world will appear accordingly. It is foolish to shape the world, let us shape ourselves first.

Let’s change our vision..!!

(Source: Internet, unknown author)