Leading the Way at Follow the Leader

by Mark S. Fulton

Remember the childhood game “follow the leader”? You’d be sitting around with a bunch of friends and one of them would suddenly jump up and challenge everyone to mimic the actions and stay on the trail of the pacesetter. Some in the group would choose to go home and watch “Leave It to Beaver.” The rest would fall in line for an adventure in peer pressure.

Girl leaders (at least the ones I had to follow) would usually defy you to perform feats that required balance and grace, like walking on a wall and executing dance steps from “Swan Lake.” This was deeply humiliating to the boys in the ranks and we bided our time until we could take over the lead.

The guys turned follow the leader into a test of courage. How close could we come to disaster while climbing a tree? How fast could we run down a hill without tumbling head over heels? How far down could we jump from a perch before we drove our knees into our teeth? Each successive male leader felt compelled to make his route just a little bit harder than the last.

Playing follow the leader taught me some important lessons that have served me well in various leadership roles in the business world:

• When in charge, it’s good to challenge people, but don’t scare them. One of the most important keys to employee job satisfaction is providing workers with opportunities to learn new skills and tackle new tasks. Talented people can tire of repetitive chores. Help them look for ways to try fresh approaches to their job.

Conversely, don’t confuse a challenging opportunity with an overwhelming responsibility. Teaching people to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool rarely produces an enthusiastic response. Don’t dump duties on people who are ill-equipped to handle them with the hope that they will learn by doing. Make sure the challenge is suited to the person being challenged.

• Show your followers what you want them to do before you ask them to perform. Providing procedure manuals doesn’t necessarily mean people will understand what’s in them. Develop a coaching or mentoring program within your business that pairs experienced workers with novices.

Leading by example becomes even more important when you are trying to create a corporate culture. Do you want your business to be acknowledged for its commitment to quality, integrity and service? Guess where those traits are born? A leader must demonstrate enthusiasm for the values he expects his company to manifest.

• Turn around once in awhile and make sure your followers are doing okay. In his book “Executive EQ,” author Robert Cooper describes emotional intelligence as “the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection and influence.”

In other words, leaders should be sensitive to the needs, hopes and frustrations of those they lead. By tuning into your followers’ emotions you will gain valuable management insights that will help you build loyalty, limit misunderstandings and increase productivity.

That’s not a license for constantly looking over the shoulders of employees, prying into their personal lives or smothering them with counterfeit concern. You must find a balance between caring about a person and encroaching on his or her privacy. Willie Shoemaker, the best jockey ever, said that he kept the lightest touch on the horse’s reins: “The horse never knows I’m there until he needs me.”

• Participating in a group can stretch individuals’ self-imposed boundaries. Team objectives and synergies often open new avenues of exploration for the people on the team. Try to create opportunities for employees to step outside their job description and pursue assignments that tap into reservoirs of unused aptitude.

This out-of-the-box application of skills can turn out to be one of the most rewarding parts of an employee’s job. Furthermore, the willingness to take on new responsibilities is often a good indicator of an employee’s untapped potential and suitability for advancement.

• Not all leaders should be followed—sometimes its better to go home and watch “Leave It to Beaver.” Bosses who manage through intimidation, humiliation and obfuscation write memos that say things like: “Firings will continue until morale improves!” Assuming you don’t fall into that category, it is nevertheless a good idea to be vigilant for leadership lapses.

If you feel yourself coming down with a case of workplace grumpiness, take a break. Go smell the roses or punch a wall—whatever works. If you don’t, you may find yourself the last one on the deck of a sinking ship, wondering where the lifeboats are.

I never cared for doing the “sissy” stuff that girls did during follow the leader. And there where times when I thought some of the guy leaders where lunatics. Yet in some ways, those childhood challenges may have taught me something about trying new moves and taking risks that helped me lead others a little better.

Copyright 2001 © Mark S. Fulton