5 Myths about Being a Follower

This text is a part of the 5 Myths collection.

Mistaken Beliefs about Followership

Followership, like management, is liable to misunderstanding. In contrast to management, nonetheless, followership has few (if any) optimistic perceptions in modern tradition. Within the Nineteen Nineties, David Berg performed a number of coaching seminars on management and followership and reported that contributors used phrases like “sheep,” “passive,” “obedient,” “lemming,” and “serf” to explain followers—hardly a lovely description.¹ Equally, a latest educational literature survey says that followership stereotypes view followers as recipients or moderators of leaders’ affect (Shamir, 2007)² who dutifully perform the orders, directives, and whims of the chief, with out resistance or initiative (Kelley, 1988)³. Not surprisingly, the resultant focus has been practically solely on leaders, and the huge historical past of analysis on management could be considered because the research of leaders and “subordinates.”⁴

It is crucial that we rethink and proper our stereotypes of followership. As Christians, any specific position of following is subordinate to our highest name of following: we observe Christ (deference) by way of the facility of the Spirit and with all our coronary heart, thoughts, soul, and power (engagement and zeal) with a view to glorify God and construct his kingdom (mission possession). So for many who observe Christ, all of life’s roles and obligations are a part of such following. It is usually important that we perceive that the pervasively destructive angle now we have towards deference and subordination runs afoul of biblical attitudes towards followership. Clearly, we observe Christ himself, however we additionally observe human leaders he has put in authority over us, together with each secular rulers (Rom. 13:1) and non secular overseers (1 Thess. 5:12–13). Our first biblical identification is certainly one of followership—and if that notion is distasteful to us, it’s seemingly that now we have some work to do in reworking our personal coronary heart attitudes.

Allow us to not solely depart behind simplistic stereotypes but in addition assume extra deeply about a few of our extra delicate and hidden misperceptions.

1. Followership Exists for the Sake of Management

Although followership includes deference to management, such followers ought not consider their lives as revolving across the chief. Nonetheless, this isn’t all the time simple in a world the place organizational charts are normally simply management charts that nearly deliberately ignore the co-productive nature of management and followership and poorly replicate the need for good followers. Comparable issues are discovered in lots of authors who research, analysis, and write on followership as a result of the truth that they method followership from the angle of organizational management or outcomes.³ They thus deal with questions like how a pacesetter can achieve and handle a extra quite a few and responsive group of followers.

When followership is leader-centric, the mission of an establishment, firm, group, or church recedes into the background. Chief-centric followers search to please the chief and sometimes find yourself dropping themselves of their makes an attempt to be the particular person they assume the chief desires them to be. As an alternative of being leader-centric, good followership must be mission-centric. The follower’s first dedication is to a mission, not a pacesetter. Satisfied of an establishment’s mission and dedicated to try collaboratively towards attaining it, one then accepts the position of a follower inside a corporation that features deference to a selected chief. The important thing level, nonetheless, is that this transfer is made as a result of followers, leaders, and the group as an entire share a dedication to a typical mission.⁴ Mission-centric followership validates our Spirit-given giftings and fosters private accountability as a result of one senses not solely an organizational dedication to a selected mission but in addition a divine calling to that mission. In different phrases, the rationale one joins a corporation is that one sees its mission as a respectable expression of God’s calling on one’s personal life.

2. Followership Is an Unworthy Purpose

One other mistaken stereotype is that followership is a brief necessity that should be endured or, higher but, circumvented. One’s actual identification is as a pacesetter, and one should merely endure by way of a season of followership as a way to the top of management. The duties of a follower are merely resumé constructing, accomplished just for the prospect of being rewarded with management alternatives, roles, and titles. However such aspirations circumvent the true significance of followership and sometimes foster naïve conceitedness that detracts from the aim of rising in Christlikeness. Finally, dismissive attitudes towards following compromise one’s credibility in a corporation, group, or church.

The dedication to observe properly is a worthy calling in and of itself, a truth that’s made very clear in Scripture. A disciple (learner) of God is most basically a follower—on this case, a follower of Jesus. Followers of Jesus have far-reaching influence and affect, and they don’t have to grow to be leaders with a view to have such influence. As followers, we merely take part what God is doing on the earth; our lives are written into his story. Discovering one’s place as a pacesetter shouldn’t be practically as necessary as understanding one’s place as a follower inside God’s kingdom. The calling to function a follower doesn’t depend on drawing consideration to oneself however to the God who calls us to characterize him in spheres of affect as his ambassadors in addition to witnesses of his Spirit residing inside.

3. Following Is Passive and Requires Few Items or Skills

We’ve already recognized the stereotype of followers as sheep or lemmings that lack the capability to assume for themselves or the arrogance to steer others. It’s value analyzing this kind of pondering extra rigorously. There may be an unspoken assumption on this line of thought that followers and leaders are two several types of individuals. Leaders have authority, charisma, energy, affect, and significance, in order that they set the bottom guidelines and make necessary choices. Followers don’t. Followers, in impact, are outlined by what they don’t seem to be: they don’t seem to be leaders.⁵ It’s assumed that they don’t seem to be certified or outfitted to contribute considerably to a bunch, venture, group, or church. They’re individuals who rubberstamp the concepts of these with higher creativity and affect.

Fortuitously, pondering of followers as a selected (and poor) type of particular person is starting to vary, not solely due to biblical correctives resembling these now we have already talked about but in addition due to analysis accomplished inside the context of enterprise and administration.⁶ Removed from the faceless lots of the subservient, good followers exhibit a remarkably excessive stage of aptitude and depth of character—and these qualities are all of the extra admirable for the truth that they usually go unrecognized. The competence and work ethic exhibited by followers underscore each their information of a corporation and their important presents and skills. Good followers represent the important means for achievement in any group, firm, or church.

4. Follower Photographs Are Unattractive and Repugnant

One of the vital pervasive metaphors for followers within the Bible is definitely sheep. We are likely to despise the notion of being a sheep—being a sheep is simply as dangerous as being a lemming or a serf. Nonetheless, there’s merely no denying the truth that it is a metaphor the Bible makes use of (and makes use of steadily) to explain individuals who faithfully observe after Jesus. Extra troubling nonetheless is the truth that biblical imagery normally invokes points of being a sheep which are precisely the kinds of issues that hassle us. Sheep should not simply liable to observe, they should observe as a result of they’re in some sense depending on the shepherd. In biblical instructing, sheep constantly want a shepherd; sheep with out a shepherd is all the time a destructive picture that forebodes catastrophe for the sheep.

Followers of Jesus have far-reaching influence and affect, and they don’t have to grow to be leaders with a view to have such influence.

However this doesn’t exhaust the best way the Bible describes sheep. Although sheep want a shepherd and are supposed to observe, biblical metaphors don’t image sheep as senseless followers. In actual fact, it’s fairly the other. John 10:5 makes it clear that the sheep observe as a result of they acknowledge the voice of the shepherd, and in the event that they hear a stranger, they won’t observe however fairly flee from him. So the sheep should not silly or senseless: they are going to observe a voice they acknowledge as the nice shepherd’s however refuse to observe a stranger. John goes on to notice that the false voices calling to the sheep should not merely strangers (just like the voices of shepherds who look after different flocks) however fairly robbers and thieves—people who find themselves deliberately making an attempt to deceive and exploit the sheep. So the nice sheep, as depicted in John 10, are what we would name “deception proof” (or, on the very least, “deception resistant”). They simply plain refuse to pay attention to those misleading voices (John 10:8). They’re conscious that one voice is making an attempt to cause them to their very own demise and destruction and the opposite voice is main them to plentiful life (John 10:10). So, although good sheep nonetheless have to be led, they’re additionally very discerning in regards to the voice they are going to observe.

5. Management Requires Coaching however Followership Does Not

Hundreds of books on management are printed yearly. Our instructional establishments in the US supply 469 organizational management diploma packages, a quantity that doesn’t embody academic or worldwide management packages. Predictably, there are few books printed on followership and no diploma packages in followership. Whether or not these numbers point out a scarcity of demand, a scarcity of theoretical or theological creativeness, or just a latent cultural expectation, it’s clear that even when one wished to coach followers, it might be a lonely job.

It’s seemingly that the underlying motive that followership coaching appears so counterintuitive is that we’re nonetheless held captive by the stereotype of followers as sheep or lemmings. Certainly it doesn’t take any coaching to observe the lemming in entrance of you off a cliff. However as now we have identified, it is a false stereotype—or maybe higher put, a stereotype of a foul follower fairly than a very good one. Might you think about firms making choices about management coaching primarily based on a great of dangerous management? Who wants coaching to shout at individuals and make dangerous choices! Allow us to all agree that doing one thing badly doesn’t require coaching. The purpose is that each management and followership, when aimed toward a very good best, are actions which are necessary and demanding, and never many people are absolutely outfitted to do them properly.

Conclusion

We have to domesticate a imaginative and prescient of followership that calls for the easiest of our presents and skills but on the identical time consists of actual respect and deference to our leaders. We’d like a imaginative and prescient for followership that calls for our mind, engages our feelings, and workouts our wills—as a result of in any other case, a part of us continues to be sitting on the sidelines. We have to be engaged with others as a dedicated workforce or, to make use of the biblical metaphor, as a single physique the place every of us is dedicated to the entire and subsequently involved for every half and in addition subordinate to the top.

This text is customized from The Call to Follow: Hearing Jesus in a Culture Obsessed with Leadership by Richard Langer and Joanne J. Jung.

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