The art of developing and maintaining followers is every leaders’ headache. Today’s followers maybe tomorrow’s rebels if not handled consciously with both head and heart.

The truth of the matter is, effective leadership, the type that one can take charge without a title or position, in today’s disruptive world with all its human and technology hazards in both political and corporate settings, has become a herculean task for emerging leaders. How do effective leaders remain relevant to their followers, the cause they stand for and command acceptability from the led in today’s world? The answer is simple – leadership is all about authentic relationship between the led and the leader.

Human Capital International (HCI), your trusted leadership and entrepreneurship source of information, through research and experience spanning decades, gives you five tips on how to win the heart and head of your followers as a leader.

See your followers as potential leaders not as subordinates.     

Effective leaders consciously see their followers as potential successors hence mentor them to assume leadership roles. The core of leadership is to achieve big things with and through the cooperation of the followers. In essence, effective leaders do not do things all by themselves and are preoccupied in identifying and mentoring people who will carry on their legacies. The best way to test whether followers are being equipped for future leadership roles, is to watch how they perform when the leader is not around. Effective leaders delegate roles to their followers while they guide and watch them from aside closely. Giving a follower an opportunity to execute a task, otherwise seen as a preserve to the leader, instils trust in a follower and thus wins loyalty for the leader. Followers need to feel that their contributions to the organisation is valuable and that they are being prepared for bigger roles in the future.

Social capacity. Followers; be staff members of an organisation, apprentices, or members of a religious institution, are all attracted to leaders who exhibit excellent and genuine interpersonal relations, are empathetic and shares a sense of identity with the rest of the team.  A leader’s role should not be preoccupied by targets or performance only and ignores light, but very important social things that bond a team together like the family. What holds teams and organisations together is the maintenance role played by leaders; the ability of leaders to find the common ground between team members, mediating social and intra -personal conflicts and the balancing act of helping followers achieve their dreams and the organizational tasks and targets. When followers trust the leader’s social capability beyond tasks and organisational considerations, they reveal themselves more to the leader.

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Remain a student of wisdom and intelligence.

It has been said that leaders are readers, and readers are possible candidates of leadership. Every leader is expected to always be on a discovery journey and a miner of new knowledge every day. That way, a leader is able to use reason, observation and experience to make informed decisions. Sound judgement attracts acceptability from followers because followers are always looking out for value addition on them. A leader who lacks depth and expertise in industry innovations and current trends, risks becoming irrelevant to his followers, organisation and when that happens your followers will take advantage of you and undermine your authority as well.  You will then be only taking a walk with no one following. Effective leaders do not see continuous learning as an option, but rather an uncompromising choice to make in order to gain acceptability and maintain followership.

Listen to understand. Followers will always have ideas and complainants during the entire process of leadership. A leader should therefore be humble enough to listen to ideas and complaints with a view of accepting suggestions and solving problems or challenges as they come and are brought to your notice. Giving a listening ear to a junior staff is a great way of “stealing” the mind and soul of a follower. Effective leaders are able to enrol their followers into bigger projects, without any form of coercion just through their rare ability to listen and demonstrate authentic appreciation for their input.

Involve your team.

Effective leaders have learned to master the art of participation and commitment. They know that when people are given the opportunity to contribute to a process that evolves into something big, their participation and ownership of that big thing is assured. The internet has virtually broken the barrier of access to knowledge and created a room for everyone to be intelligent. A junior staff or follower can therefore have the latest knowledge of solving company problems/ challenges and a true leader should create an open-door policy where before taking decisions, staff members are involved. This process ensures that a leader is not walking alone and is able to accomplish big things through the principle of collective decisions making and buy -ins of the followers.

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