© Roger M Tagg 2015
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Barbara Kellerman (BK) is a professor at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government.
A previous notable work by her was 'Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens', Why It Matters (ISBN 1591391660).
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | xv- xvi |
George Orwell, when a colonial police officer in Burma, was effectively compelled, by his Burmese charges, to shoot an elephant against his will and better judgment. |
| xvii | Investment in the 'leadership industry' has been estimated at $50 billion, and "a good number of people make a good amount of money". | |
| xviii | "... we overemphasize the former (leadership) and underestimate the latter (followership). | |
| Faculty members at Harvard forced their President, Lawrence Summers, to step down see this page to e xplain why. [RT: I see he's still at Harvard, and in the Kennedy School.] | ||
| xix | Two definitions of 'followers' are possible: a) those of lower rank and b) those who follow 'behaviourally'. BK says that many people in US felt that President George W Bush 'followed' his Vice-President Dick Cheney. But BK declares that she is going to use the former ('lower rank') definition. | |
| xx | "Followership is the response of those in subordinate positions to those in superior ones." | |
| xxi | "This book was written for leaders, every bit as much as for followers." [RT: In my view, rather more for leaders.] | |
| xxii | "We are all, every one of us, followers first." She means as children, then as pupils. | |
| "Bad leaders, I now understand, cannot possibly do what they do without bad followers." Think Hitler, Enron. | ||
| 1 - | 3 | Audi's slogan 'Never Follow' "tapped in to people's aversion to being, or to be seen as being, one among many in a meek and mindless herd". [RT: Is not a majority of the world in that herd anyhow, and don't advertisers and politicians successfully play on that? I guess they are not the people who would buy Audi cars.] |
| [RT: It's not that long ago that such herd mentality was endemic in the culture of many nations, not to mention religions or political movements. In some ways it is still with us. And what about the vast armies of the world wars?] | ||
| 4 | Native Americans were "aghast" at "the European habit of hierarchies". [RT: but they were painfully effective, at least under the 'ancien regime'.] | |
| 5 | But in the US, both economic and political systems "valued the entrepreneurial individual more than the group as a whole". | |
| "Recall the American archetype: he is not the common man content with the commonplace. Rather, he is the cowboy, who prefers to be alone rather than comply with the conventions of others." | ||
| 6 | Alexis de Tocqueville: (In the US, there) "is a general distaste for accepting any man's word as proof of anything" - which makes leadership more difficult. | |
| One sometimes hears the horrible phrase 'leading up' rather than followership - as in Michael Useem's book that was aimed at subordinates. | ||
| 7 | "Words and terms recently in fashion, especially in corporate America, including empowerment, participation, teams and distributed leadership, all suggest rather a level playing field, which by and large is false." | |
| "Joanne Ciulla has suggested that the word empowerment is the most insidious." | ||
| 8 | "The promise of empowerment is often empty, bogus ... manipulative ... intended to keep subordinates in line by deluding them into thinking that in some fundamental way their relationship to their superiors has changed." | |
| 9 | It is not always possible to 'lead up' - is most cases subordinates have no choice. | |
| 10 | "Our tendency to see great change through the prism of great leaders is not confined to our reflections on the past." This is 'Leader Attribution Error'. | |
| 10-11 | This error often arises because "we prefer to keep it simple". [RT: Maybe a balanced assessment is 'too hard' - like so much of life in general.] | |
| 12 | All the subordinates of 'Chainsaw Al' Dunlap (Chairman of Sunbeam) were craven, cowards. | |
| 15 | Milgram's experiments (which involved ordering subjects to give others electric shocks) showed the inherent tendency of people to obey orders. | |
| Erich Fromm thought (in relation to Nazism [RT maybe communism too?]) that Europeans "were searching for a new source of authority" after "the demise of the mediaeval church-state" (which was a long -endured form of totalitarianism). | ||
| 16 | Adorno too found, statistically, an authoritarian pattern. | |
| 2 - | 28 | With the information revolution, power [RT: from knowledge] inevitably trickles down. |
| 30 | Wikipedia is an example of bottom-up creation of collective intelligence. | |
| 31 | Pressure groups on the internet can trump management decisions. An example was over Dolce and Gabbana's advertisement. | |
| 34 | "The line between the leader and the led has been blurred." | |
| 3 - | 51 | Frans de Waal: "A chain of command beats democracy any time decisive action is needed." |
| 52 | Milgram: We are "born with a potential for obedience". | |
| "People in large numbers cannot govern themselves. They need some sort of structure, staffed by people who have the authority to administer our collective affairs." Someone being president allows us "to turn our attention elsewhere". | ||
| 54 | Freud: "The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them." It's a replacement of the father figure of course! | |
| This probably explains why people follow religions [RT: film stars, sporting icons, pop artists too?] | ||
| 55 | It's "the wish to worship". | |
| A leader provides stability, security and 'comfort of community' - they can protect us from 'the other' that we fear. | ||
| Hopefully, by this process, "we gain meaning and worth". | ||
| 56 | "In the main, leaders think of followers who defy or even dispute them as subversive." Whistle blowers are obvious examples. | |
| We also follow our fellow followers. | ||
| 57 | "Freud believed that we behave differently - worse - as members of groups than we do as individuals." | |
| 58 | Robert Michels: It is the "incompetence of the masses" that makes leaders absolutely indispensable. | |
| 66 | James C Scott: "The more menacing the power, the thicker the mask" [RT: presumably, that the subordinates have to adopt]. But "what is being said behind closed doors?" | |
| 69 | It's all very well conforming, but the big danger is Groupthink. | |
| 72 | "Much, if not most, of the time, followers disengage (from leaders). They go along with their leaders, not because they are captivated ... but because the alternative is less attractive." | |
| 73 | Ira Chaleff: Followers should "sustain the courage to be honest with their superiors". | |
| 4 - | 76-7 | Abraham Zaleznik, in "The Degrees of Subordinacy" distinguished 1) impulsive (rebellious); 2) compulsive (usurpers); 3) masochistic; and 4) withdrawn. |
| 81 | Robert Kelley had a 2x2 matrix for types of followers with: top right = exemplary, top left = alienated, bottom left = passive, bottom right = conformist. | |
| 85 | BK herself has 5 types: Isolate, Bystander, Participant [RT: for better or worse!], Activist and Diehard. | |
| 5 - | As her main example of Bystanders, BK classes the German people under Nazism. | |
| 6 - | As her main example of Participants, BK classes the management of Merck over Vioxx. | |
| 7 - | As her main example of Activists, BK classes the 'Voice of the Faithful' campaign against Archbishop of Boston over cover-ups of child abuse. | |
| 8 - | As her main example of Bystanders, BK classes both the Taliban and some US soldiers who were fighting them. | |
| 9 - | 213 | Under 'values' BK discusses "what do good and bad followers look like". |
| 233 | "Bad leaders depend absolutely on bad followers to sustain them." | |
| 10 - | 241 | Followers |
| 1) constitute a group that, although amorphous, nevertheless has members with interests in common. | ||
| 2) while they lack authority, at least in relation to their superiors, they do not by definition lack power and influence. | ||
| 3) can be agents of change. | ||
| 4) ought to support good leadership and thwart bad leadership | ||
| 5) who do something are nearly always preferred to followers who do nothing. | ||
| 6) can create change by circumventing their leaders and joining with other followers instead. | ||
| 242 | "Followers are more important to leaders than leaders are to followers." | |
| "Follower-follower relationships are much more important than we generally assume. In fact leaders are quite often incidental to the action. |
This book started really well. However I did not find so much of interest in the middle and later parts of the book. It rang true, but was not really anything new.
I think the balance of the book is still more towards leaders. Maybe it is too early to prescribe many guidelines for how followers can still do useful things when the leadership environment is against them.
Also, I don't reckon there are that many subordinates who really have the making of good followers in the senses discussed.
For a comparison of some different views on Followership, try this page.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 8th May 2015
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .