Mon • Nov 24th, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 2
PBS marked the 30th anniversary of the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide with a documentary film – JONESTOWN: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. “Drink the Kool-Aid” has become a permanent part of vocabulary since November 18, 1978 when 913 people at Jonestown, Guyana followed the instruction of Jim Jones, a Pentecostal preacher turned demagogue, to commit suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. It’s come to mean accepting an idea or following a leader, however good or bad, without question.
I remember the horror of Jonestown and still wonder why over 1,100 people followed Jones from Oakland, California to establish a bizarre religious community in a remote area of Guyana on the northwest coast of South America. In the University of Chicago “Sightings” November 20, blog, Brian Britt a professor of religious studies at Virginia Tech suggests that there is still some explaining to do about Jonestown.
In the introduction to his book Courageous Followers: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders, Ira Chaleff reminds us that the rise of Nazi Germany was a 20th century tragedy of nationalistic demagoguery and mass credulity writ large. Which for him makes the study of followership essential.
At one time or another we are both leaders and followers. Good leaders make good followers and good followers make good leaders. While there are thousands of books on leadership only recently has attention been paid to the responsibility of followers. The wiki “Followership Exchange” is the only website I know of dedicated to followership.
What makes for a good follower? As in the title of Chaleff’s book it takes courage. He suggests that we’ve been conditioned from childhood to obey rather than question. It takes courage to stand up to our leaders and wisdom to know how to serve and thus make our leaders good.
A healthy leader/follower relationship is not hierarchical with followers as subordinates circling around a leader. According to Chaleff, leaders and followers form a partnership in which they orbit together around a purpose. Courageous followers are not sycophants who flatter their leaders to gain favor.
Chaleff develops five “dimensions of courageous followership.”
1. The Courage to Assume Responsibility
courageous followers taking responsibility for self-development and for the development of the organization
2. The Courage to Serve
helping the leader manage time and information
3. The Courage to Challenge
however uncomfortable initially, when leaders are challenged constructively they will appreciate that followers are in their corner
4. The Courage to Participate in Transformation
facilitating personal transformation when the practice or behavior of the leader violates or threatens the values of the organization
5. The Courage to Leave
the times and circumstances when it is good for the follower as well as the organization to separate
I remember playing a childhood copycat game called “follow the leader.” We would line up and try to imitate the kid at the front. One-by-one we were eliminated as we messed up. The game ended when the only one remaining behind the leader became the leader of a new game.
For Ira Chaleff the game is over, that is, if we have courage.
The Courageous Follower is a good read for leaders as well.
Mon • Nov 10th, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 4
In his October 18, 2008 column, Tom Friedman, author of The World is Flat wrote that the “central truth of globalization today” is that “We’re all connected and nobody is in charge.” We want to know that someone is in charge, someone we can trust with our hopes and dreams – whether it’s the leader of our nation, teachers in our neighborhood schools or the pastor of our congregation.
Last month I hosted a conference call to discuss how leaders in faith communities manage financial crises. Pastor Dave Rodes, who has been forced to lay off several staff members, was on the call. His attendance is up but giving is down.
He talked about “managing hope,” quoting John Ortberg in the Leadership Journal . Ortberg wrote that hope is the one thing that leaders cannot delegate.
In Good to Great, Jim Collins passed on a leadership lesson from Admiral James Stockdale who told him how he and his men survived imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton. First, he had to “confront the brutal facts of the current reality and second was to retain faith that you will prevail in the end regardless of the difficulties.”
And then Stockdale said, “I boil it down to this. Leadership is a two part job: Define reality and offer hope.”
Lisa Marshall wrote about an NPR broadcast immediately following 9/11 in which a school teacher in Seattle described the leader’s role in difficult times to “speak the truth and point to hope.”
Marshall used that comment for the title of her book, because, as she wrote “it captured the essence of the kind of leadership that the twenty-first century will require of all of us.”
Sun • Nov 2nd, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 2
Never before have there been choices like this in a presidential election. In addition to differing political ideologies we are caught up in the politics of identity – race, age, and gender. For some, religious persuasion defines the issues. “The Amazing Race,” as veteran columnist David Broder describes it, is the best he’s covered since 1960.
When the ballots are finally counted on Tuesday, November 4, over 130 million Americans will have chosen either John McCain or Barack Obama to be their leader. Which raises another issue – how we choose leaders.
During the PBS NewsHour on Friday, October 31, in Jim Lehrer’s interview with Mark Shields and David Brooks , Shields said something important about political leadership which applies to leaders everywhere.
He observed that “nobody chooses the environment in which he runs.” Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama would have chosen to be president during the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression. Each of them has criticized the war in Iraq. Both are promising change from the current administration.
New Presidents, just as leaders in any enterprise or organization, inherit circumstances they have not created and over which they have little control. Eventually, however, they bear responsibility for their environment.
Later in the interview Mark Shields talked about what we expect of leaders, including Presidents:
“a leader must know and understand himself or herself and know and understand the times in which he lives.”
Whether you vote for McCain or Obama, this is the criteria you will use, or should use, in making your decision. Upon election, one of them will represent all of us. In addition to how they stand on the issues we want them to do a good job of managing themselves as well as the world as they found it. This goes for leaders everywhere.
Since the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon campaign I’ve voted for winners and losers. Some of our recent Presidents have disappointed us. They seemed unable to manage themselves and at times they have not represented us well in the global community.
I hope that this time the winner will rise above partisanship, will be guided by an inner compass and understand that in this global village our welfare hinges on the well-being of the rest of the world.
Our votes count for something just that important.
PS – Check out this article for a surprising take on the influence of religion on politics. It may not be what you think.
How Running a Campaign is Like Building a Megachurch.