The Work Wire
SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. and Bob Goodwin, President at Career Club, host a lively conversation on how the latest news impacts all things work-related.
The Work Wire
Followership - The Work Wire
Discover why being a follower might just be as crucial as being a leader with Bob Goodwin, President of Career Club and Johnny C. Taylor Jr., SHRM's President and CEO. This episode takes a surprising turn as we scrutinize the societal obsession with leadership and the overlooked art of followership.
Prepare to have your notions of success and influence turned on their head as we uncover what it means to be an exemplary follower in a world transfixed by leaders.
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Bob Goodwin:Hello everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club. Welcome to another episode of the Work Wire, where I'm joined by my good friend, the president and CEO of SHRM, johnny C Taylor. Jr, johnny, how are you doing?
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:I'm doing really well, bob. I'm always well when I'm going to be talking to you. So life is good. I mean it, I mean it.
Bob Goodwin:It's great to see you. I know you've been super busy this past week and, for listeners, we're taping this same week. Johnny just got back from testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Wow, very good, very, very good. Thank you, you did a wonderful job. Today we're actually going to build on a previous episode.
Bob Goodwin:So we had recently spoken with Shiv Shivkumar, who's an executive in India and just a tremendous thought leader on leadership, and one of the things that he brought up serendipitously was around followership, and he shared a statistic that said he did a Google search on leadership and he got 6.2 billion. That's with a B hits on leadership clearly a popular title. Then he typed in followership and you got 3 million hits. I'm from Tennessee, my math skills are not that good, but if you do 3 million over 6.2 billion, that's point. Oh, oh, oh. Five, yeah, like it. That's a small number. People are not really thinking a lot about followership, certainly not to the extent that they're thinking about leadership, and offline you and I have talked. It's like well, if there's no followers, then what is the leader really doing, and what does it mean to be a great follower, and is that even a desirable thing to be? So I'll kind of tee it up to you there, johnny. We talk a lot about leadership. We're going to unpack followership a little bit. Where's?
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:your mind go initially. So to what I was taught really, really early and I think all of us were by our parents don't be a follower, like right, you're supposed to be a leader when you're trying to. I have a 13-year-old daughter as, and, and you do everything that you can to encourage your children not to just be a follower. So no surprise, by the way, that there are only 3 million hits versus 6 point, some odd billion hits on leadership, because from very early on we teach folks the importance of being a leader. The fact of the matter is all of us can't be leaders Like there's one CEO, there's one head coach, there's one this lead actor, whatever one department head, and so in some ways, we are where we are because of what we have said and what we have promoted and taught and developed people to understand.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:And I find it fascinating. There are two things. So one is the observation that we are where we are because this is what we've emphasized, right. The second thing is leaders have unfortunately not stopped and thought I am only leading because there are people following. By definition, like you cannot have one without the other, and I know we're going to spend some time, and during the conversation with Shiv, we talked about it in a world where there was vertical top down leadership that worked because people were forced to follow the person who was appointed, elected, whatever the king or queen.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:In this new world, which is more of a horizontal world, you can't just be made the CEO. Frankly, you and I've talked about this as well. It's why CEO turnover is at an all-time high, because the board can't just say this is going to be your leader, stick with it, and that person is going to be there for 30 years and if you don't like it, leave. That's not the way it works anymore. Employees speak up, different stakeholders, partners you just can't lead the way you used to. So followership is something that we don't discuss and probably don't teach even in our leadership programs enough. And ultimately, I believe, going forward from a 21st century business environment, if we don't start to sensitize leaders to the importance of followership, they're going to continue to lose their jobs because the followers are quickly dethroning the leaders.
Bob Goodwin:The irony, too, is, every leader is also a follower.
Bob Goodwin:You have a board right, I have customers, I have clients. Right, I mean, they can fire me at a moment's notice as well. But to the point about son, be a follower, daughter be a follower, be a leader, be a leader, don't be a follower, like you know, and don't do what the crowd is doing, don't do it. Ok, there are really good qualities about that Right and autonomy and you know sense of, you know morally directing yourself, but at the same time, within an organization, in a team, not everybody can be the quarterback organization in a team, not everybody can be the quarterback right, and there are other roles on a team that are extremely valuable, maybe just not as visible. There's three qualities that I just wanted to kind of get you to kind of start riffing on here a little bit, John, and see if we can kind of build the theme out here a little bit. But I was thinking about, you know, what are some of the character qualities of people who are great followers. Three things that just sort of popped in my mind. One was humility.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Yes, number one.
Bob Goodwin:The ability to subjugate my ego to a greater cause than just me, which kind of relates to the next one, which is a level selflessness. It's not actually all about me. And then the third piece and I bet, if we did a word cloud on the most common word that we use on the work wire, is trust. There has to be mutual trust, and so humility, selflessness and trust where's that? Take your mind.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Yeah, the humility. It's so funny. I didn't know where you're gonna go, but humility was literally the first word that came to my mind. My first thought was like, yeah, and it's not a fake humility, because I've met some leaders who appear to be humble but in their core of core they're not. And listen, it's a challenge, because leaders and I said this to you several times, in fact, most recently with Shiv was people do rally behind decisive, fearless leaders who, in the face of adversity, you step up and even if you have doubts, you can't message the doubts to your employees, because at once they're looking for someone they know the world's falling apart. They need leadership.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:I had the good fortune of interviewing George Bush in front of 20,000 people and I asked him here you are, 9-11, you get the call, you're at the elementary school reading to the kids. What do you do? And he said I must project calm. Those are the two words I will never forget. He said every leader.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Well, in some ways that conflicts with humility. Right, because you're being told this is not the time to say oh my gosh, the rest of the world is attacking us. And no, no, you've got to say and we will taunt them down. We will track them down. We're going to do what we do Like. This is what America is about. So I think the challenge is you've got to be like. This is what America is about. So I think the challenge is you've got to be, you've got to project confidence and calm and leadership, but inside you acknowledge that you're vulnerable and that you're, and the leader who can figure out how to do both of those things at once is going to be the successful leader. But it's I don't know that I'd want to follow someone who is too humble, right? That's not. That's not interesting either. No, I mean, how do you react to that?
Bob Goodwin:No, so well, I just there's leaders who can exhibit true humility. And then there are the followers who are humble enough to say you know what? You know, that's a decision that's been made. I'm on this team. It isn't about me being right, it's about us collectively figuring out what is the best course forward. And so for me, you know, the humility on the part of the follower is, you know, not fighting for the steering wheel all the time, right, right. And it's interesting At Career Club, you know, we're very big into emotional intelligence, as I know that you are, and whenever I hear you say this is a great line.
Bob Goodwin:They're not soft skills, they're power skills. And so one of the instruments that we like is disc, and that's kind of, for you know, communication styles I think they're broader than just communication. But the top two, you know, with, with drivers and influencers, those tend to be the leader kinds of personality types. But then there's the SS. In the season, the s is like harmony. Harmony, like they're excellent number two people, they're the glue that actually keeps an organization together. My wife doesn't want to be the leader.
Bob Goodwin:She likes being, you know, the person that drives harmony with the things, but she doesn't need to be the leader. And then the C's are the people that are like way deep into the details and again, they just want it to be right. They don't have to be the person in front. So, you know, I think you know, one of the things that I would hope that we can start to foster a conversation on is, you know, acknowledging and recognizing great followers, like like, like you know bob. You know Bob or Brian or Susan, you are the glue that keeps us. Yeah, I'm the one that gets the headlines. You're the glue that actually keeps this whole thing going, and we don't have the successful company that we have, the successful organization that we have, without you, your humility, your selflessness and your commitment to the organization.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Well, and it's funny from an HR perspective we've got to figure out how to reward followers, because part of the problem with the entire system is the leaders make the most money and the quarterback makes more money than the rest of the folks and the coach makes a certain amount of money over the on coaches, right? So, head coach. So the systems don't encourage good followership, like you know what I mean. And so we've got to take into consideration that everyone wants to do well financially and in their career. They want to be seen as a success with their children and their family members, et cetera. So we've got to say it is okay to be a follower again, which is totally inconsistent with what most of us have worked, hold or tell our children. And we've got to say there's actually so much value in that, until we're going to pay you for that, we're going to reward you in some way. So you made me actually think about it.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:It's easy to say it, but how much? Where do we what, what in our reward systems say it's actually good for you to be a follower, and that's something that I think we as HR practitioners those of you who are listening to the work wire we should revisit if you want. What's that? Old line that which gets rewarded gets repeated. So if you want people to be a follower, it's more than just talking about it. We've got to reward it yep, I, I.
Bob Goodwin:That that's great. And you know there's financial capital and there's also social capital, right, and so, like you are our employee of the year, and here's why you're our associate, you know, teammate, whatever the vernacular is of the year, and here's why I think too I want to go back to your point, because I was thinking the same thing. You know, our system rewards leaders. You make the most money. You've also and you've talked about this in previous episodes You've also got the most responsibility, so it cuts both ways. But the leadership team is responsible for setting the strategy, making thoughtful choices to direct the business, but it's upon the followers to execute against that strategy. And are we measuring the things and rewarding the things that help the strategy get done? And if we are, then we've probably got a pretty good system.
Bob Goodwin:The other thing I want to say just very quickly on rewarding people is also not punishing people, because what I mean by that and this is going back to our conversation with shiv, so apologies for these frequent references, but I guess you need to go listen to that episode but is the intellectual honesty. So if I'm a great follower, a really great follower, I can go to you, johnny, and say what you said, what you did. I I'm not an insult that you wanted I want to tell you how that actually landed, right, right or whatever. But but you know, truly in the organization's best interest and the mutual trust going back to that idea, that I can tell you the truth as I see it and not be punished for it. Otherwise I'm just going to go in a corner and say to heck with it.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:That's right, the opposite of rewarding. But it also goes to your second point. So you talked about humility, but selflessness. You know the way that you operationalize what you just described is, if it's all about you as a leader, if it is always all about you, you're always right and you're not doing this for the good. You know, I often am confronted with that as a leader of SHRM. Sure, I go give testimony so everyone's buzzing.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Johnny Taylor was before the US Armed Services Committee, et cetera. But you know why I did that? Not for my you know glory committee, et cetera. But you know why I did that? Not for my glory, but because our elected officials need to know that you protect this homeland one individual at a time. It takes all of those 700,000 military folks and 1.4 million, whatever the numbers, are millions of people, individual followers, because, yes, you have generals and admirals and all of that, but ultimately the person who is putting their lives on the line and going in and protecting this homeland are people. But in the process of doing it, if it becomes all about the leader, yes, the leader is going to get the attention. I say that to my folks all the time.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:The number of times when Congress didn't call and ask for my smartest governmental affairs person to come and give testimony. That's just not how it works. They want the leader to make the statement. But what I have to do and I think I do decently, and I'm hoping leaders if I want to get better at it too, by the way is be reminded.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:So I bring my support staff with me and say hey guys, I'm just a talking head. You prepped me, you researched me, you told me what the issues were, what the, what people show them love, shower the attention. At the end of the day, I can't put them on that seat in the front of those members of the US Senate, because that's not who they want to hear from. But I selfless, as you use your term selflessness I've got to make it really clear to my team that I'm the talking head. But you are the reason we are here. If you do that, and if you do that from an honest space, not just the talking point people are my most important asset. But if you genuinely communicate to your employees that you matter and that I just have to go out here and be the front, people will follow you.
Bob Goodwin:Yes, and so you raised the topic a minute ago about how a leader can also demonstrate humility while not kind of inadvertently going into weakness, because nobody wants to follow a weak leader. I think this idea of you having enough confidence to be able to hear the truth and me having enough trust in you that I can tell you the truth right, that's a healthy organization, right, and even I mean this is what I love about even how we talk about stuff is like I'm not just agreeing on every point, you're not agreeing on every point. It's like, well, yeah, but also and so it's the the humility to be open to maybe a way of seeing something that you didn't understand or recognize, I think is an amazing quality in the leader.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:But that also requires trust that I am not going to be penalized for telling the truth in a respectful way that's right and and again and I can say this from the hat of the leader we need our followers to recognize that we too are human beings. We're not infallible. So, just as you need to, I have to give you right a culture and environment where you feel like it's okay to tell me respectfully. It's not okay to be uncivil. You know, we talk a lot about civility this year at SHRM. It's not okay to be uncivil, disrespectful One. Imagine working for the president of the United States and you hear that person the leader of the world or essentially the leader of the United States say something wrong. You're supposed to figure out how to let him know. Mr President, that's not quite right, but I wouldn't put him on blast in the front of the world leaders. That's not the way to get it done. So followers also have to be mindful of how important it is for your leader to be respected by other leaders, and so when and how you bring the mistake, the shortcoming, to our attention is as important, and that's what followers since we're talking about followership today, I don't want to get too adrift on, because we've already said they talk a lot about leadership, but followers have to be very thoughtful about how they also bring it to our attention.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:I was at a, oh, observed a CEO I won't name the company who met with their employees and the employees just went in and attacked the CEO and at the end of the open forum, the CEO was just taking the hits and taking the hits. Open forum. The CEO was just taking the hits and taking the hits, thinking that it said I'm showing you that I'm vulnerable, I'm humble, I'm this. I said no, no, no, one never disrespects the position I took, air Force ROTC. You always respect the position, right, and that's what can happen. Is, sometimes I think there's an overcorrection and the followers think I can say anything to you how I want to say it, when I want to say it, where I want to say it, in the name of transparency, and that's not cool either. That's not good followership.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, we talk a lot about respect. Civility like that has to be the stage for honest discussion to be happening. Otherwise it's just mean spirited and selfish. I just want to say what I want to say. I don't care how you receive it, that's your problem. That's the opposite of selflessness, that's right.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Right no of selflessness.
Bob Goodwin:That's right, Right, no, 1,000% From where you sit, Johnny. What else can? This is going to sound kind of weird as it comes out, but what else can leaders be doing to foster a?
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:culture of trust, wow. So that's. We need a whole other conversation on that, but I'm going to give you the two things that again I'm talking about at SHIV again. But we've got to communicate better. Bottom line is, in the absence of good communication, verbal and written your employees don't know what you really believe. They don't know what you think. They don't know the strategy. They don't understand that the layoffs were intentional, necessary evil that we needed to protect. We needed to lay off 10% of the workforce to protect 90% that we needed to do this.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:We are notoriously not good communicators and I own that as a leader. It's something that I try to focus on a lot and I own that as a leader. It's something that I try to focus on a lot. It's really hard to get people to rally behind you if they don't exactly know where you're going and just because you know it in your head, like you're too often really smart people and leaders, like they know what they're doing in their head. But that's not okay, particularly in a workforce where people voluntarily show up every day. That was another Shiv's comments. Like you've got to think about your employees as volunteers and if you don't and you think, somehow you control them, and they will do that because you said do it when you said, then you're going to fail over the long run and perhaps in the short run. So I would say that's a big opportunity for leaders.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:As we think about followership is we've got to communicate if we want people to embrace followership. The second thing I mentioned, obviously, is rewarding them. We've got to come up with ways to reward, financially and otherwise, recognition and ways celebrating people who are really good followers, so that we help shift the narrative away from everyone should be the leader, because they can only be one ultimately and at a certain level, the ceo or the president or the executive director, whatever you want to call it, and so we've got to figure out how to cascade. I think the third thing that I think about a lot is and it's it's. It's it's in this concept of if you want I don't know how to, I don't know what the right term is but if you want people, if followers't know how to, I don't know what the right term is but if you want people, followerships I'm going to focus on followers If you want your leader to be vulnerable, then you have to give them the space to be vulnerable, right, and so that's odd, because the leader followers are like no, no, we've got to give it to the leader.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:No, the leader. What you need to give your leader is the space to be able to pull you together and say you know what? I don't know what the future is. We talked about VUCA. Yeah, it is absolutely a VUCA world, and the reality is I'm guessing too. When I was a lawyer, when I practiced law, we would always say we are called practitioners because we can't guarantee the result. Like, we're practicing law and, by definition, if you're practicing, sometimes you're going to be wrong. We leaders need permission from our followers to be able to be wrong.
Bob Goodwin:So so we're thank you for saying that, because where that has been taking my mind is to be a great follower is to assume good intent. Right, yes, assume good intent if you're working. I'll just say this straight up to anybody who's listening or watching this right now if you're working at a place where you cannot assume good intent on the part of your employer, I can, can't tell you strongly enough go find another place to work Like. If you cannot assume that that is the definition of distrust, that I do not believe that their intentions are good, that's a problem.
Bob Goodwin:If I do believe that their intentions are good, then I do think that that creates the right uh environment for the leader to say I don't know, or right, I thought this was right, it didn't work out. We thought as a leadership team I'm we keep kind of individualizing leaders as a group we thought this was the right direction or the right innovation or the right move to partnership to go take on. It didn't work out the way that we thought that it was going to work out and they're not crucified for it by the followers, but recognition everybody's doing the best they know how and in some cases, to your point on vuca the best.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:They don't know how which is more likely, in this world that we live in, to be the case. Who would have thunk three years ago that there'd be this thing called AI and that it would lead to the level of displacement of roles and just a total shift in the workforce? And it's just none of us. I never. I was actually talking to a friend of mine who's, let's just say, a day over 40 and saying I never grew up, bob. You tell me, in my wildest imagination, my wildest dreams, I watched have all of the computing power of like it's just unimaginable.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Or I was riding down the street with my daughter and thinking I don't have to know where I'm going at all. I'm going to type the address in Worse. Yet all I got to do is type in the name of the organization, the first few letters of a restaurant. It knows where I am, it populates, and it says this is how you get there. I don't have to think about a map or anything. This happened in the last decade, my friends, not 50 years, like the decade. So you're asking leaders, followers, you all are asking us to kind of know what the world's going to look like Five years from now. You're not sure what it's going to look like a year from now. It's just too many unknowns.
Bob Goodwin:I want to, and I know we need to wrap up here very, very quickly. There's just one point that you're making because I was thinking about, like I'm the world's worst Google just tell me where to go, right, okay, and then, like you end up in an alley, so I do. Blind followership is not good either. Okay, that's right. Does this organization, and where they're trying to lead it, does it align with my values? Is this a culture that I can truly give my best to, that I can get behind the purpose of either?
Bob Goodwin:You know the culture, the customers we serve, the product that we make like can, can I genuinely as a human being, not just a work producing unit, get behind this? Then I'm going to be a really good follower and I'm going to contribute to the success of the company, our consumers and the leaders. Then that should be pretty fulfilling for a lot of people, particularly for those who do not actually aspire to leadership roles. Great salesperson doesn't necessarily want to be the sales manager. I love being an individual contributor, like I don't want adult daycare and taking care of everything else.
Bob Goodwin:I want to do my own thing, but my point being is that to be a great follower, you need to really make sure that the company that you're at, the organization you're a part of, aligns with your personal values. If that is true enough because nowhere is perfect If that is true enough, then you've got a great chance of being a great follower. I want to do some more thinking, Johnny, with you on how to re-engineer the reward system. So just because I've got a VP title and you've got a senior manager title, senior manager can make more than the VP. Yep.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:Happens a lot.
Bob Goodwin:You know, because of how they contribute and their role as a follower, not just their title.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:All day. We know individual contributors can be paid for being great. It goes back to our seminal point here. Everyone can't be a leader, but everyone wants to do well in their career, make more money. So we've got to develop systems that say it's okay to be a follower for the next 30 years. You don't have to aspire to be in the C-suite in that.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:The other thing that you said is and I love that point about you know, am I aligned with that culture? And I think you said most of the time, or generally, or however you qualified, it was great, because you're right, you'll never always be 100%. But this is now the pressure back on. The onus is on leaders. You can't expect people to make that determination.
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.:If you've not articulated your culture, if you've not articulated the values Right, every employee won't agree with them and some people will choose not to work with you because they don't agree with it. But if you don't tell them, you're asking them to make a decision without the input. You're asking them to make a decision without the input. So communication, once again, is critical for leaders and followers. You all have to give us feedback if we're not making it clear enough. If our communication is not effective and it's by definition not effective. If you don't understand it, then that's the work for both sides. So I think leaders and followers should have a great relationship, symbiotic. You can't live without the other, and if we do this right, our organizations will thrive.
Bob Goodwin:Cannot say it better, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap us up with that. Johnny, that was an excellent summation. So thank you For listeners and viewers. If you've got thoughts on this, this is obviously a very wide open kind of a topic and what works well for you as a follower where you've seen that work well in organizations or not work well, but we'd love to hear from you. So you're welcome to email me at bob at careerclub. We'd love to get your thoughts. In the meantime, we thank you so much for investing a few minutes out of your day today and, johnny, thank you again for everything that you shared with us. Thanks so much. Thank you everyone. Be well, work well, work well.
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