I am fascinated by power and have worked with the highest levels of leadership throughout my career. In this blog, I ask whether a leader has to have followers?
A Leader: 5 million followers, 50K followers, 1 follower…?
I was recently notified I’d been selected as one of Germany’s top 100 women entrepreneurs. I had a good laugh (I’m not an entrepreneur, nor do I consider myself Top 100 of most things) until I saw that I would be listed publicly if I paid a five-figure sum. A few weeks before, I had been invited to two “predator” health conferences as a keynote speaker, where speakers were requested to pay a nominal sum, and participants were expected to pay thousands in participation fees.
There’s an entire predatory (or scam) industry around people’s hopes to be perceived as a leader. Paying to be listed in a Top 30 Under 30s, buying thousands of social media followers, and paying five-figure sums to have your article published in a journal, just to name a few.
I’ve never paid for a leadership title or followers this way, but these experiences have made me wonder what real leadership is. Are you a leader because 5 million people follow your work, path, or feed? Is 50K sufficient? What if it’s only one, or perhaps none…?
A Leader: A Visionary
One definition of a leader is someone who inspires followers. These are people who can mobilize and build movements for change. Think Gandhi, Mandela, or Malala.
Mobilizing leadership can also be dangerous. Think Hitler. Or any current authoritarian or populist leader or candidate – there are unfortunately many.
Some leaders are ahead of their times. A few become inspiring forces of change long after their deaths. Think of the figureheads of most religious movements.
These different types of visionary leaders inspire for different reasons. Someone like Mandela inspired hope for freedom and change. Trump inspires collective hate and a combination of power and destruction. Religious leaders – and perhaps even many artists and influencers – inspire a sense of belonging to a cause and community.
A Leader: An Enabler
I have in my career and life been inspired by many (hopefully positive) visionary leaders. I’ve read the biographies, watched the movies, followed and rooted for various careers and elections, and tried my part to support visions of progress and change. Yet looking at my own work experience and studies over the past 25 years, I’ve been most inspired by leaders who have been enablers.
Instead of seeking people to follow their path, enabling leaders try to support and elevate the people they interact with. Think of that special teacher or university professor who helped you discover your true passion and strength. Or the manager who gave full credit for your work in a board meeting.
When I look at my colleagues who have in the past decade held various leadership positions (CEOs, Ministers, various chair roles), the ones with the strongest followership have not been those who have tried to gain or strengthen their power through threats or coercion (or carrots of buying favors), but those who have been inclusive, enabling, and who have strengthened entire teams and communities.
A Leader: A Tolerated Title
In many large bureaucracies that I have worked in (at international and national level), I have learned that some leaders are only so by title. I’d call them tolerated leaders, because people still (more or less) partner with them (externally) or follow their orders (internally), but most in private admit to just sitting the leader out. I’ve found this tenacity and immense patience baffling, if not terrifying. It has felt like zombie-like complacency and lack of any individual agency.
Where a leader is merely tolerated, the leader (most often himself, but at times also herself) may not be aware that they only command fake, symbolic followership. Looking at many conflated egos among leaders, they may not even care if their followers are real or not. Maybe they’re the same type who would simply buy a million followers on social media, or pay to be published in a journal. As long as they can make-believe they are leaders, and have some proxy title and status symbols to go with it, this seems to be sufficient for them.
My Hope: Stay real
Power works like a drug. People in leadership want more of it and find it immensely difficult to let go. At some point, many leaders stop caring whether they still lead with vision, or are enabling. Many don’t even care if their followers are only going through the motions and tolerating them, or may just be fake followers.
The same holds true in our social media age. Social media channels are known to be designed addictively, triggering dopamine (short-term happiness hormones) in our brains every time we see a new follower or like. To feel like a leader, you want more of this drug, at all costs.
As with all of my blogs, I’m not writing anything new. I just hope we all reflect more on what we are really doing, and why. This is my own reflection, and hope – also for myself – to stay real. We can’t in these current times afford to work for fake or poor leaders – or become one ourselves.
Katri Bertram 