Followership – The Other Half of the Story
by Marc Hurwitz
Marc Hurwitz, PhD MBA MS MS CMC, is Associate Director, Undergraduate and Non-degree Programs, Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, University of Waterloo, Canada. He won the Sandford Fleming Teaching Award in 2019 for his work teaching leadership, consulting, and entrepreneurship. An author of three books and numerous articles on followership and leadership, Marc spent 10 years working for large corporations and has an additional 15 years co-founding and running a leadership-followership consulting firm. Marc is honoured to be one of the facilitators at the 2020 ILA Leadership Education Academy.
It was the year 2000. The new millennium had just arrived without the predicted collapse of civilization due to the need for four-digit dates. It’s hard to believe, 20 years later, that was actually a thing or how obsessed people were about it. I had just finished my MBA and was changing careers, leaving many years in Training and Organizational Development to move into Marketing and Product Management roles. As part of the MBA, I’d done the “typical” leadership and Organizational Development courses, but something felt missing. It left me with a lot of questions, including: Is it true that only leaders influence followers? In a matrix organization, what happens if all your bosses are transformational? Is a servant leader serving or leading? Is a position in a hierarchy the same thing as being a leader? If we want leaders to be honest and smart, don’t we have the same expectation of them when they aren’t leading? Three years and a lot of middle management experience later, I realized what that missing piece was… followership. It was an idea that quite literally changed my life.
I decided to quit my corporate career as a result of this “aha” and start a consulting firm based on leadership and followership as complementary roles in the partnership activity we call leadership. I’d love to say the path from then to now has been linear; it hasn’t. Rather than being cutting edge, I quickly discovered these ideas were bleeding edge and, frankly, needed a lot of refining to be both academically sound and practically useful – a combination my consulting partner (and life partner) and I call pracademic. From doing our first consulting gig in 2005, to submitting a book manuscript in 2010, to ripping it all up and starting over in 2013, we have seen plenty of changes. For example, when we started training, our first clients would not let us use the F-word for fear employees would think they were being insulted. Now, when NASA recently announced a posting for new trainee astronauts, it said that it was looking to recruit people with strong followership skills. What a difference a decade or two makes.
I first attended an ILA conference in 2013 in Montreal. I remember very well the feeling of not knowing anyone and being somewhat intimidated by the leadership and followership experts whose books and articles I had been avidly devouring. Fortunately, on the first day of the conference, I presented in a session chaired by Rob Koonce – also the Chair of the Followership Learning Community (now the Followership member community) at the time – with fellow presenter Stephanie Colbry (nee Povlosky). They very quickly made me feel at home and introduced me to many of the other people in the followership learning community, a number of whom I now consider friends, and many of whom I’ve collaborated with since. While my aha in 2003 ultimately spurred me to go back to university and dedicate my life to leadership, followership, and partnership training, that conference in 2013 gave me a community to share my passions with.
Since then, I have chaired ILA’s Followership community, run a followership conference, attended every ILA Annual Meeting since except for one, and presented multiple times. I have taught leadership (and followership) courses at the graduate and undergraduate level, given keynotes and workshops at conferences around the world, and consulted with the largest of organizations – the U.S. Government – as well as start-ups. My research focus is around rethinking leadership as a partnership activity. Just as you wouldn’t teach only one role in ballroom dancing, why would you teach only one role in the leadership dance? Yes, teaching one role alone would improve the quality of the dancing, but not nearly as much as if you trained both people and, importantly, understood how the roles contributed to the partnership both separately and as complementary skills. Using this analogy, I co-created a model of leadership-followership that respects and articulates both roles. It also democratizes leadership, recognizing that everyone takes on a leadership role some of the time and a followership role at other times. Neither is better or more important and, it is this perspective, that moves us away from the idea of narcissistic leadership to a place of balanced, collaborative relationships. It is the foundation of my research and the many classroom activities and organizational interventions that my partner and I have developed since.
And now, I have the distinct honour (yes, I’m Canadian as you will certainly discover when you hear how I say “about”) to be one of the facilitators for the Leadership Education Academy this summer in Silver Spring, MD, a metro-accessible suburb of Washington, D.C. I plan on bringing two things: first, a pracademic approach to organizational consulting whether that involves planning a half day offsite training session or creating a strategic plan for organizational change. Second, I have a unique take on leadership that is particularly relevant for 21st century organizational practices. Like the other facilitators at LEA, I have a lot of college experience, too, and look forward to sharing some of the fun things you can do to energize a group of students while engaging their minds and hearts. Finally, while also learning from the other facilitators and attendees, I am hoping to leave with new friends and colleagues.
Do consider joining me and the other facilitators at LEA for a marvelous adventure in leadership and followership.