Much is made of the art of leadership. But for every leader there are many more followers, and there’s not much in the way of advice on how to follow well.
Just as followers complain about their leaders, so leaders despair of their followers — they always seem to want more time, more attention, more money, more help, more resources, more reassurance, more praise. At times, leadership can feel like managing a kindergarten class on drugs.
In finding out about what makes a good leader, I also took time to ask what leaders look for in their followers. The answers were surprisingly simple. In order of priority bosses look for:
- Hard work
- Proactivity
- Intelligence
- Reliability
- Ambition
They are several ways of looking at this list:
- Bosses want you to work hard, deliver the goods and stop whining,
- These are low hurdles to jump, but bosses pick them because many people fail to jump these hurdles: beating your peers should be easy if this is all bosses want.
- It is OK to be ambitious.
If this is what bosses want, what do they dislike? The biggest issue that came up was trust. One boss summed up everyone’s view when she told me: “I forgive most things. I forgive cock ups, I forgive failures as long as people do not repeat the same failure. But when the trust goes, it’ over. I can not work with a team I do not trust.”
Digging further, the trust agenda became clear. In part, trust is about honesty — being open about problems early so that they don’t spiral out of control.
It is about reliability and delivering on commitments. And it is also about supporting the boss when things get tough — keeping quiet during a critical meeting is just as disloyal as plotting and moaning about the boss behind his or her back .
The formula for survival and success is simple from the corner office: show hard work, proactivity, intelligence, reliability and ambition and you will be ahead of many of your peers in the race to survive. Bosses find it very hard to fire people they trust.
Of course, applying the survival formula and managing your boss effectively requires both skill and practice. That is the subject of future blogs.
