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We hear and read many pieces of advice on how to be a leader, how to develop your leadership skills and so forth. Seldom, if ever, have I seen anything on being an excellent follower.

Why is this? Do we implicitly think all followers are losers? Do we think it takes no training, effort, or standards to be a good follower? Do we think followers are simply sheep? Has anyone out there in Nip Impressions readership land ever taken a course in following? I doubt it.

There have to be followers in order for there to be leaders. And if we think of an organization as something of a pyramid, there are obviously many more followers than leaders. If you are in middle management, you are simultaneously a follower and a leader at the same time--you lead your team but you follow the directions of your boss.

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Being a great follower requires a skill set of its own. I once accepted a position where I was the only middle manager who did not have a Ph.D. I asked my boss what he expected of me. His answer was short, sweet, and to the point: "Make me look good."

That really captures it doesn't it? Yes, we can add some old acronyms you are used to if you have read this column for a long time--be LME (Legal, Moral and Ethical) or practice LOC (Lean, Orderly and Clean), but "Make me look good" really covers it all.

As a follower, should you show any initiative? A story I have told before: I moved into a new position at a facility where I had never worked before. The secretary in the engineering department, who reported to me, spent half of every day preparing a steam balance report that was worthless because none of the gauges were correct. I told her to stop it and she was horrified--half of her work just went away. Now, this place was so full of silly activities caused by years of mismanagement that she probably could be forgiven for never having questioned why she did this report. However, I would hope this is an exception, not the norm in your organization.

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Great followers have a tendency to create work without thinking about it. Something routine doesn't work one day, so they create a workaround to keep things flowing. This is good. But, soon the workaround becomes the norm and instead of fixing the root cause problem, they just build the workaround, which takes "only ten minutes a day" into their routine. Ten minutes a day is over one work week a year (43.33 hours to be precise). Do this several times and we have not a week but wasted weeks every year. Good becomes bad.

So, if you are a leader, take time to teach your followers to be good followers. If you are a follower, blindly following is not enough; you have to think, too. It is hard work to be a great follower.

What do you think? Take our quiz this week, if you dare to be a great follower. You may take it here.

Safety teams are loaded with highly trained followers. If you are on a safety team of any sort, whether EMTs, fire brigade or something else, make sure you know your job well, even if you are "just a follower."

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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