The Community Course
Part 2 - Community Design
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14. Community Followership

Need for Followers
There can be no leaders unless there are followers. Good followership requires intelligence and preparation as surely as does good leadership. Many a time a good leader finds his careful efforts of no avail because no one has taken the trouble to prepare to be an intelligent follower. In a well balanced community at least as much thought and effort and interest will be spent in being good followers as in being good leaders.

Good Leaders are Good Followers
An efficient and well selected board of directors of a large corporation very often is made up of men and women who are good followers as well as good leaders. Each member of such a board is a successful person of affairs who does not feel a suppressed urge to gain a place for himself or herself. He or she already has that place, and feels secure in it. His or her aim is not to create an impression of one’s own importance, but to help get the business done in the best possible manner and with the least possible waste of time.

Very often at a board meeting some member of the board is better qualified than others on the subject under discussion. The other members turn to this person, who becomes the natural and informal leader for the time being. It is the business of the others to follow the leader, to understand what the leader says, to approve the leader’s position except where they see some apparent weakness or possibility of improvement. In such cases they make suggestions or ask questions, not for the purpose of seizing leadership, but to help clarify the issue and to help get it wisely disposed of under the leadership of the person best qualified.

Very often a large corporation employs a general manager, who presides at most board meetings. The manager may have a smaller income than any member of the board. On the whole he or she may be a less able and experienced person than the members of his board. Yet for the purpose at hand they have chosen him to be a leader. They pay the leader to free them from the necessity for leadership in the affairs of that organization. They want the person to succeed as leader, and they endeavor to make themselves the leader’s efficient followers. In such a situation, if some member of the board tries to impress the other members with his or her importance, and undertakes to act as leader for that purpose, he or she becomes a conspicuous nuisance, and tends to get left off of such boards. 

Ruling Without Majority
On the other hand, the members of such a board are not “yes-men.” They are ultimately responsible for the success of the undertaking, and are keenly on the watch for any weakness in the program, or for any opportunity to improve it. They do not hesitate to criticize when criticism is necessary, but in order to criticize effectively they must first understand. That is, they must first be good followers -they must have followed the leader until they know what the leader plans to do. Sometimes a single board member who thinks he or she sees a serious fault in the program will stubbornly present his or her position almost alone. If this person is known for good judgment the other members will hesitate to decide until that person’s doubts are removed. In many good boards of directors a formal note seldom is taken. Definite action of such boards nearly always follows general unanimity of opinion, quite generally, acceptance of the opinion of those best qualified to judge the question. 

The good leader in such a situation fully discloses his or her plans and purposes. The leader’s aim is not to be sustained, but to find the right course, and any disclosure of error or weakness in the leader's plans, or of any possibility of improvement, is welcomed by the leader. The aim of the entire board and of the manager is not to have a program emerge with the honor of its origin attached to some person, but rather to get the best possible results. 

Good Followers Are Competent
A long experience with a great variety of public and private boards and organizations leads to the conviction that most able, experienced, and successful people make the best followers. A person who must be responsible for large undertakings has a great sense of relief when he or she finds that those who must be lead are people of intelli­gence, responsibility, and judgment - people who know how to be good followers. 

Every community needs people who are not concerned with leadership, who perhaps have no large plans of their own to promote, but who can tell the difference between a good and a bad plan, and who trained themselves to be good followers in case they thoroughly believe in the project to which they give their help. In many communities there are such persons. Mr. A. knows the status of every building and meeting place in town. He has no ax to grind, and can be depended on to find a meeting place or a location for an undertaking. Mrs. B. knows who would be interested in any project, and can be depended on to send out notices and to make announcements in the newspapers. Miss C. is a good secretary, and will keep clear and adequate records. Mrs. D. and Mr. E. will be responsible for telephoning or writing or visiting everyone who should take part in an undertaking, and will see that no necessary party is omitted. Mr. F. can be counted on to look after the janitor work, to see that meeting places are clean, the furniture in place, and the heating satisfactory. He is a good mechanic, and can be counted on to take care of any mechanical needs or arrangements. Young Mr. G. is ready to be a general flunky and assistant to the leader, running errands, doing chores, picking up loose ends - doing anything that will make the leader’s efforts more effective. All these special services are in addition to participation in making plans and programs.

Practices of Good Followers
For persons who are free from an itch for conspicuousness, or who can overcome that weakness, there often is as much pleasure and usefulness in being a good follower as in being a good leader. One need not be a blind follower. He or she can limit his or her work to undertaking which he or she sincerely approves. A community which has competent, intelligent, dependable and experienced followers is very fortunate.

When a leader plans for a talk and a discussion it is of enormous help to him or her to have followers who are interested and prepared. The ideal attitude for a follower is to try to understand the leader and subject he or she is discussing to inform himself or herself on it, to see the difficulties and weaknesses in the leader's position as well as its strong points, to ask intelligent questions, to throw light on the subject from the follower's experience and observation. Unless at the end of a discussion the leader has found it necessary to correct or enlarge or better define his or her views, the discussion has not been greatly successful. Great followership requires interest and preparation as well as great leadership. 

Followers Support Leaders
Many a potential leader with a great and a sound purpose, especially if he or she were somewhat in advance of his or her time, has failed, and the leader’s purpose for the time has died, because no one took the trouble and interest to understand the leader’s purpose and to work for it. Good followers in a community will not let the finest community project die because the leader does not quickly have popular support. By being discriminative, receptive, imaginative, and efficient, followership can be as helpful and as influential as leadership in community affairs. 

At their best, democratic leadership and followership become indistinguishable as they blend together in the endlessly varied interplay of cooperation. In many of his or her relationships every person is a follower of someone else. In some respects every normal person can be a leader, if he or she will pay the price of preparation. In all cases the best relationship is one of interdependence, fully recognized and accepted.