Bad followership can destroy team performance. Followership concerns the level of engagement and critical thinking skills demonstrated by team and group members. A group member may have all the right skills and be in the right role, yet sit in the corner and pout rather than perform. Other members may have fewer skills but work hard and offer good ideas for improving processes which, ultimately, improves team functioning. 

As seen in the diagram, engagement and critical thinking are independent dimensions of followership. These two dimensions can be divided into four followership types: Self-Starters, Brown-Nosers, Slackers, and Criticizers. The power of the model becomes obvious when leaders use it to assess the follower types on their team or group. Knowing members’ types will provide leaders with insights on how best to manage them since each type should be approached differently. . 

Self-Starters, such as Bob and Vonda, are individuals who are passionate about working on the team and will try to make it successful. They constantly think of ways to improve team performance by raising issues, developing solutions, and showing enthusiasm. When they encounter problems, they resolve issues and then tell their leaders what they have done rather than waiting to be told what to do. This follower type will improve their leaders’ performance by offering opinions before, and providing constructive feedback after, bad decisions. Self-Starters are critical to the performance of teams and are the most effective follower type.

Brown-Nosers such as Ken and Sharon have a strong work ethic but lack critical thinking skills. Brown-Nosers are dutiful and conscientious, rarely point out problems, raise objections, or make waves, and do whatever they can to please their boss. Brown-Nosers constantly check with their leaders and operate by seeking permission rather than forgiveness. Leaders who feel entitled, think they are hot, or think they are the only ones capable of developing solutions, often surround themselves with Brown-Nosers because suck-ups constantly flatter their great bosses. Brown-Nosers often go far in organizations, particularly in those that lack objective performance metrics. Organizations lacking clear measures of performance often make personnel decisions based on politics, and Brown-Nosers play politics very well.

Slackers don’t work very hard, think they deserve a paycheck for just showing up, and believe it is the leader’s job to solve problems. Slackers are clever at avoiding work, often disappear for hours, look busy but get little done, have good excuses for not completing projects, and spend more effort finding ways to avoid finishing tasks than they would by just doing them. Slackers are “stealth employees” who are happy to spend their time surfing the Internet, shopping online, gossiping with co-workers, and taking breaks with no concern for their jobs.

Criticizers are followers with strong thinking skills who are disengaged. Rather than directing their analytical skills to productive outcomes, they find fault in anything their leaders and organizations do. Criticizers educate co-workers about their leaders’ shortcomings, how change efforts will fail, how poorly their organizations compare to the competition, and how management ignores their suggestions. In terms of their impact on team and organizational performance, they are the most dangerous of the four types because their personal mission is to create dissent. If not managed properly, these team killers can take over teams and entire departments!

Leaders can use the followership model to understand group dynamics and what they need to do to improve team talent within any team or group. These four follower types are dynamic—they can and do change over time. Members who were once Self-Starters can become Criticizers and vice-versa. Because follower types are dynamic, leaders should periodically assess their own behavior and use the followership model to evaluate the impact it is having on the people in their groups.

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and co-author of The Rocket Model

At my house, I am a leader. More accurately, I am one half of a leadership team. I have 3 children, and I like to think they need my advice, direction, and all of the other things that go along with being a parent.  As I wrote that last sentence though, I realized this is why it’s a good thing I’m only one member of the leadership team in my house. Absent from my stream of consciousness right then were terms like tenderness, cuddling, and kissing boo-boos to make them better. It’s not that I don’t do those things (or enjoy doing them); it’s just that those are not what initially come to my mind when I think of how I lead the kids at home. Conversely, I’d wager that those terms would be at the top of their mom’s list. 

It is interesting to think of how differently our followers act depending on who seems to be in charge at the moment. With me, things are more pragmatic; if we have a task to do (whether it is putting together a race car track, picking up toys, or finishing homework), we focus on the task. When things need to be done, I prefer to just get them done. No need to talk about how much you like the task, or if you feel it’s fair – the task needs to be done, so let’s just do it.     

Conversely, when mom is in charge I hear a lot more back-and-forth about the tasks – “well my teacher said you can only get the answer if you do it this way” (it’s math – 2+2 is always 4), “I don’t want to pick up my toys” (they’re your toys), “why?” “Why?” “Whaa?” But when I am in charge, those types of behaviors don’t often occur.

Whether my kids have a preference for either of our leadership styles, I’m not sure. One is 13 and doesn’t seem to look too favorably on anything her parents say. The second is 2 and half, so our communication is not particularly deep or feedback rich and is sometimes limited to talks about the merits of Hot Wheels vs Matchbox, whether we like brown or yellow dogs better, and Dora the Explorer.  And last is our 1 year old; he doesn’t really talk, so unfortunately he just has to deal with things. I help him put together Mega Blocks, mom soothes the devastation brought on by literally spilled milk.

The point being, when something just needs to get done, I’m the man they go to. But when feelings get hurt, knees get skinned, or emotions are running high, everyone seems to clamor for mom’s attention.   

I think this may be analogous to why finding good leaders can be difficult. I fulfill one part of our followers needs – mom fulfils another. But our followers need both. 

In a work setting, discovering an individual who excels in all areas is rare; that is why good leaders can be hard to come by. As Dr. Robert Hogan pointed out in his blog Leadership is a Hygiene Factor, although a good leader may not be the most important aspect of unit performance, a bad one can certainly ruin things. I suppose that is why things at my house have not imploded yet – we have the benefit of spreading the needs of our followers across two people. My advice? Try not to alienate the kids too much – unit performance will suffer.

Armies with the best soldiers usually win wars, and sports teams with the best athletes usually win championships. Everyone knows how important it is to pick the right people for a team, yet this is an area where leaders woefully fall short. Far too often team members are selected because of empire building and politics rather than skills and experience. A simple way to determine whether a team or group is staffed properly is for leaders to ask themselves these five right questions:

• Does the team have the right number of people?
• Does the team have the right structure?
• Do team members have the right skills?
• Are team members in the right roles?
• Are people on the team for the right reasons?

Overly inclusive or empire building leaders often make the mistake of having too many people on a team, which has a negative impact on team efficiency and effectiveness. Many leaders also make the mistake of organizing their teams around their favorites rather than letting the nature of the work drive team structure. Sometimes, members do not have the right skills or are not in the right roles, which also has a negative impact on the team’s ability to win. Team performance usually suffers whenever anyone is on the team solely because of favoritism or political expedience. 

Although leaders can ask themselves the five right questions at any time, it is best to do this after team context and goals have been determined, as these are critical determinants of team talent. Leaders who answer these questions before team context and goals are set are usually just making rationalizations for their favorites.

Strong leadership is a crucial ingredient for a successful company. With highly qualified people at the top, the entire organization is more likely to outperform the competition and hold on to their most talented employees. Yet, many organizations lack a tried-and-true method for identifying and developing those employees who show leadership potential.

Current processes for identifying high-potential internal talent are often marred by bias and politics and rely on past performance as the main indicator of future performance. Such strategies reward bold, attention-grabbing behaviors that may be attractive in junior employees but become counterproductive at the upper levels.

As several recent high-profile stories suggest, companies don’t have much luck when hiring external C-level candidates either. Studies show that more than half of outside hires fail, many within the first 18 months on the job. As they are unfamiliar with the business, employees, culture, and unique challenges, it is no wonder why many external hires struggle to find success.

However, when hiring managers use the empirical data provided by personality assessment, rather than gut reactions influenced by politics or initial reactions in interviews, they can develop high-potential programs that ensure a stable of promising leaders. By using assessments, managers gain key insight into their high-potential employees in the following areas:

• Bright-side personality – the everyday personality that determines leadership style, judgment, and ability to get along and get ahead
• Dark-side personality – also called derailment personality, this consists of characteristics that under stress or boredom can become debilitating career derailers
• Values – the drivers, beliefs and interests that determine what candidates are willing to work for and in what type of job, position, and organizational culture they are likely to feel most satisfied
• Cognitive ability – a measure of candidates’ ability to think tactically and strategically

When personality assessments are at the center of a high-potential program, organizations have an empirical basis for identifying, selecting, and developing the next generation of leaders.

To learn more about how personality assessment can be used to identify, develop, and retain future leaders, download our complimentary white paper, From Potential to Performance.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked yet most important actions of team functioning is setting team goals. Far too many teams have  poorly defined goals or none at all. The goals of a group or team should determine:

• Size, skill requirements, roles and responsibilities (Talent)
• How often it meets, makes decisions and communicates (Norms)
• The level of engagement needed (Buy-In)
• Resource needs (Power)
• Espirit de corps and conflict resolution (Morale)
• How to win (Results)

Team and group goals define what is to be accomplished, when it needs to be accomplished, and how to know when it is accomplished. Therefore leaders must spend time developing well-defined goals and metrics for their groups and teams if they want to succeed.

Goals also determine whether members operate as a group or a team. If members do not work together, or share common identities or fates, then they need to operate as a group. Conversely, they may need to operate as a team if the members’ fates are tied to the accomplishment of the same goal and collaboration is necessary for success. Having well-defined goals, metrics, and benchmarks will improve both team and group performance because everyone will know what is required. 

There are several other aspects of team goals worth noting. First, team goals drive team behavior; individual goals drive individual behavior. Leaders should not expect direct reports to work collaboratively if all the goals and rewards are based on individual performance. Second, team goals should be measurable and include a mix of leading and lagging indicators. Finally, team goals also need to include both internal and external benchmarks. Teams that only measure themselves against past performance may look like they are winning all the battles but, in fact, may be losing the war with competitors.

Evidence shows that at least 50% of individuals in leadership have, will, or are failing. The vast majority of suggested solutions revolve around high potential identification, leadership development programs and the like. The purpose of such initiatives is to identify the individuals who should be leaders, but given the statistic above, one has to wonder about their effectiveness.  

The methods above could use a little tweaking. Instead of focusing primarily on who should lead, organizations should place equal impetus on who should follow. An individual not being cut out for or even having the desire to lead is not in and of itself a bad thing. Lest we forget, leaders have to have individuals to lead, and it is those who are led that drive the success or failure of their leader. The term “followers” typically incites a negative response in our minds, however, workers, soldiers, and players are the backbone of any successful grouping of people: an army of only generals is no army at all. For a more recent analogy, imagine the NBA playoffs consisting only of head coaches Erik Spoelstra and Scott Brooks without their respective Heat and Thunder. It simply doesn’t work.

That said, a look through the annals of promotion would quickly reveal that most individuals end up in managerial or upper level leadership positions based on strong performance. This promoting strategy relies on a mindset we have all adopted, and for good reason as it makes logical sense: promote those who do well. Almost inevitably, one of those promotions will eventually place an individual in a position to manage people, and it is at that point logic often begins to breakdown.

Traditional logic fails because good leadership is comprised of much more than just strong performance. By taking a black and white approach and promoting leaders solely based on performance, organizations can potentially shoot themselves in the foot – actually in both feet as the repercussions can emerge on two fronts. Let’s continue with the NBA analogy above: there can be little argument that LeBron James is a phenomenal basketball player. In an organizational culture his performance ratings would be off the charts, and thus, by traditional thinking, LeBron should be promoted. So let’s hypothetically pull LeBron from the hardwood and move him into a more senior position, say head coach. Makes sense, right? Of course it doesn’t. What’s left is a team with big shoes to fill (pun intended) in a small forward, and an individual who has been pulled from an area of strength into an area in which he may or may not excel. Does LeBron have what it takes to be the coach? Does he even want to be the coach?

The example above commonly plays out in the arena of sales. Success in a sales role depends upon significantly different KSAOs (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics) than a sales manager, sales director, etc. So before a high performing sales person is moved into a position of leadership, an organization should ask itself whether they want the individual to sell or to lead. The two are not mutually exclusive and it is entirely possible that the individual can successfully do both. It isn’t necessarily logical, however, to expect leadership success based solely on strong sales numbers.

As past behavior is a solid predictor of future behavior, performance metrics should be a critical component in identifying who should lead and who should follow. They should be combined, however, with a few additional variables: values and potential.

Values - Does the individual even desire to lead? Do they want the promotion, or are they content in their current status as a high-performing employee?  Will it fuel their passion or will it extinguish their pilot light?

Potential - Does the individual possess the intrinsic characteristics to successfully lead? Do they truly have what it takes?

To summarize, sometimes a soldier should remain a soldier; a small forward a small forward. Some individuals want to lead, some don’t. Some have what it takes, some don’t. Neither side of the coin is right or wrong, as organizations require both leaders and followers, but we cannot expect to figure out who is who by judging performance alone.

Most organizations have something called an executive or senior leadership team that typically ranges in size from 6-15 people. It consists of the CEO,  COO, and functional and business unit heads. General responsibilities for top teams include setting strategy, defining organizational structure, determining key roles staffing , setting performance targets, making policy, and managing the business. Because of their unique membership and responsibilities there are some interesting observations about teams at the top that are worthy of additional discussion.

1.  Who is on the Team? Richard Hackman reported that only ten percent of the 120 top teams he researched had agreement on team membership. This finding fits in with our observations on senior leadership teams  -- inclusivity often trumps efficiency and effectiveness. These findings suggest that many top teams have “loose” boundaries and may not be as tightly aligned as one might think.

2. Top Teams are often too big to be Effective. Because top teams tend to be more inclusive than exclusive, most are too big to be effective. Since the number of relationships to manage increases exponentially with each member, top teams bigger than ten members typically suffer from efficiency, effectiveness, speed, alignment, and communication problems. Organizations tend to be more successful when CEOs use a top team of 5-7 key leaders to deal with key challenges, make decisions, and manage day-to-day affairs and a more extended team to help set strategy, review quarterly business results, etc.  

3. Should Teams at the Top Operate as a Group or a Team?  As described in The Rocket Model: A Practical Guide for Building High Performing Teams, the tasks should dictate if an individual, group, or team is the most effective way to operate. Yet top teams rarely if ever have this discussionsince the CEO usually dictates what he or she is comfortable with and leads accordingly).  Although it is well within the prerogative of CEOs to determine how they want to manage their top teams, team efficiency, effectiveness, and, ultimately, organizational performance suffers whenever there is a mismatch between the CEOs’ leadership approach and the tasks to be performed by their top teams.

4. How do Top Team Members Define Their “First Team”?  Because top team members have their own organizations to manage, oftentimes C-Suite executives define their “first team” and the function or business unit they manage. In other words, their primary loyalties lie with the HR function or EMEA business unit rather than with the top team. If the CEO is managing direct reports as a group then this is not a big deal, but these divided loyalties will cause major problems if the CEO wants to build a high performing top team. CEOs can minimize this problem by having an explicit discussion about whether direct reports should operate as a group or a team (or when it is appropriate to do so).

5. Artificial Harmony. Top team members rarely complain in team meetings, even thoughthey may suffer from divided loyalties, be unsure of who is or is not on the team, have a team too big to be effective, and/or be under a CEO using the wrong managing approach.  Many members come to meetings with “their lips sealed” and refuse to bring up controversial issues. As a result, top teams suffer from artificial harmony and talk about how wonderful everything is in meetings only to complain to their staffs. Rather than hashing out disagreements in team meetings, top team members often use proxies to fight their battles. Organizations whose top team members heap praise on their peers, yet suffer from a “silo mentality,” are often victims of artificial harmony.

6. The Cascade Effect. It is important to remember that top team dysfunction has a ripple effect across the rest of the organization. Open warfare between the heads of R&D and Marketing, Marketing and Sales, Sales and Operations, or Finance and IT will play out in major battles between the departments. CEOs need to explicitly manage artificial harmony and open warfare if they want to create a fully engaged workforce and a high performing organizational culture.

Every group and team operates in a specific context. The situation faced by a U.S. Navy SEAL team in Afghanistan is different from that faced by a team drilling for gas in North Dakota. Context is interesting because (a) it is very complicated and (b) existing research is not very helpful in telling us how context affects team success. Yet, contextual factors critically impact the success or failure of a team. The extent to which leaders can control  situational factors affecting their teams and groups varies greatly. Some situational factors can be directly influenced, others can be influenced only indirectly, and many cannot be controlled at all. Because contextual factors have a profound impact on group dynamics, getting team member alignment on these factors is a critical responsibility for leaders. All too often team members have different assumptions about customers, suppliers, or competitors.  Their well-intended, but misaligned, actions can inadvertently destroy team morale and sub-optimize team efficiency and effectiveness.

One noteworthy aspect of team context is the implicit nature of team member assumptions—team members rarely if ever articulate their assumptions about key stakeholders. In order to make the implicit more explicit, team members should work together to identify the key constituencies that affect the team. These entities might include key customers, competitors, other teams, regulatory agencies, vendors, the parent organization, etc. Team members should then discuss and agree on the top three to five assumptions they have for each constituency. Gaining alignment on team context makes it much easier to determine the purpose and key goals for the team;  reviewing team assumptions about key constituencies can also help new members get integrated into the team more quickly. 

There is no universally accepted model for transforming collections of individuals into high performing teams. There are four more common models used to improve team performance, which include Tuckman’s Stage Model, Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model, Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. Although each of these frameworks offers unique insights into team dynamics, The Rocket Model has several distinct advantages over the others.

Tuckman’s Stage Model. Tuckman noted that leaderless discussion groups seemed to go through four distinct phases: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Groups do not become highly effective until they reach the performing stage. The model provides advice to leaders for helping groups transition through the four phases. Although these phases can readily be seen in volunteer groups, they rarely occur in corporate settings since work groups are usually brought together for some purpose, have better defined roles, and have some sort of pecking order.

Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model. According to Hackman, inputs are the raw materials available to a group or team, and include team members, raw materials, equipment, etc. Processes are the procedures or systems team members use to do work, and outputs are the end products. The inputs-processes-outputs model is based on sound research, but is too vague to be of much use.

Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni developed a team stage model that includes: (a) absence of trust; (b) fear of conflict; (c) lack of commitment; (d) avoidance of accountability; and (e) inattention to results. The model provides some useful insights into team dynamics, but is not based on sound research, and although it seems to make intuitive sense, in many cases it is simply wrong.

Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. The Rocket Model capitalizes on the advantages of the previous frameworks in that it is based on research from hundreds of teams and provides sound, practical advice for improving group and team performance. The Rocket Model consists of eight components, which include context, mission, talent, norms, buy-in, power, morale, and results. Context concerns gaining team member agreement on the challenges facing the team; mission is setting team goals and benchmarks; talent focuses on the number, roles, and skills of team members; norms pertain to the rules by which team members operate; buy-in is all about fostering employee engagement; power concerns acquiring needed authority and resources; morale pertains to the level of team esprit-de-corps and conflict, and the accomplishments attained fall in to the results component.

The Rocket Model can be used to diagnose current team functioning and launch brand new teams. It can also be applied to co-located and virtual teams and groups. Because it is based on a foundation of research and provides practical advice for improving team and group performance, we believe The Rocket Model is superior to the other three frameworks.

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and author of The Rocket Model

The terms team and group are often used interchangeably, but there are some differences between these two concepts.

We define teams as consisting of three to 25 people who:

• Work toward a common set of goals
• Work jointly
• Share common leadership
• Hold joint accountability for performance
• See themselves as being part of a team with common goals and shared fates

This definition of teams is somewhat different from the usual definition in three ways. First, according to this definition dyads are not teams. The dynamics between any two people are much simpler than those between three or more people. Second, this definition assumes people share a “mental model” about the teams to which they belong. In other words they identify themselves as being members of a particular team and tend to have common interpretations of events. And third, teams tend to be fairly small—usually less than 25 people. Larger groups may call themselves teams (such as a professional football team) but in reality they are usually groups made up of various sub-teams (the offensive unit, defensive unit, etc.). Common examples of teams might include commercial aircrews, crews of firefighters, United States Army platoons, product development teams, manufacturing shift workers, fast food restaurant crews, research and development teams, and soccer teams. The individuals in each of these examples share common goals, depend on the help of the other team members, share leadership and common fates, and most importantly, identify with their teams.

Groups are clusters of people that do not share these five characteristics to the same extent as teams. A regional sales team responsible for selling insurance and other financial services to local citizens would be a prototypical group. In this so-called team, each sales rep has individual revenue and profitability goals for an assigned geographic territory. An individual’s ability to achieve these goals does not depend on what the other sales reps do; instead it is completely dependent upon that person’s own performance. Although individual efforts contribute towards the region’s revenues and profitability goals, the region’s performance is merely the sum of each rep’s individual efforts. If a regional sales manager wants to increase revenues, then he or she could add reps, expand territories, increase prices, or change the product mix; requiring the reps to work more closely together would have little if any impact on the region’s financial performance.

This is not to say that leaders play passive roles when managing groups. In fact, far from it! Leaders in charge of groups need to ensure that the members operate under the same assumptions regarding customers and competitors, possess the right skills, stay motivated, share information, have adequate resources, achieve their individual goals, and get differences quickly resolved. Contrast these leadership demands with those of a head surgeon of a cardiovascular surgical team. The head surgeon would have many of these same leadership responsibilities but would also needs to ensure that their fellow surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants shared common goals, cooperated, used common work processes, had seamless task handoffs, shared a common fate, and identified with the team as they put stents and pacemakers into patients. Thus, the leadership demands on people in charge of teams are more extensive (and consequently more difficult to master) than the demands on people in charge of groups.  

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and author of The Rocket Model