The 7 Distinguishing Doctrines of Followership

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Everyone, deep down, likes the thought of being the leader of something.

You might want to lead your Neighborhood Association. Or a project at work. Or your kid’s softball team. Or maybe you want to lead Congress. Or the UN.

Maybe you want to lead your courtroom, your family, or your morning run club that meets every week before the sun comes up. If you can name it, you can lead it.

There are tens of thousands of books centered around this topic, so you might think, “What’s different about what you have to say?”

Most resources try to teach you to be a better leader by telling you what a leader would do. They give examples and exercises that focus on expressing your particular style of leadership. But I’m about to transform your leadership, not by teaching you how to lead, but by teaching you how to follow.

Because here’s the secret that so many of us have skipped over in recent years with the rising proliferation of self-crowned leaders: if you can’t follow, you can’t lead.

That’s not my thought. That’s Aristotle. He just said it more eloquently, in typical Aristotelian fashion, when he wrote, “He who cannot be a good follower, cannot be a good leader.”

So if good leaders are good followers, what does it mean to be a good follower? What is the DNA of a great follower and how can you embody these characteristics?

The best news about this approach is that you don’t have to do something new to become a great leader. You’re already a follower. You just need to tweak how you follow in order to maximize your potential to lead.

So, here are the 7 Distinguishing Doctrines of Followership.

Why “doctrines?” Because I liked the way Wikipedia defined the word: “Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system.”

The essence of teachings. I don’t want to just give you examples. I want to give you the essence of a wide variety of teachings.

Why “distinguished?” Because these doctrines will set you apart and make you stand out. Which, as we’ll see, is one of the entry points to becoming a great leader.

1. Perspective

A great place to start when becoming a distinguished follower is with the doctrine of perspective. But what is perspective? Some might say that it’s the ability to see a situation from different angles. But that can’t be the whole story.

When it comes to being a great follower, perspective isn’t just a vision problem. It’s a commitment problem. It’s not enough to just see the different angles. You need to be willing to support an angle knowing that there are many angles. And that is hard for us to do.

We de-commit a lot in the name of our preferences, which whether we like it or not, are shifting. What if you elevated your perspective over your preference and decided to invest your commitment in the avenue of the person or thing you are following? When you understand perspective, you understand that most things can have merit. Or value. Or promise. That most things have nuance and that nuance means that they are worth exploring.

And it’s no secret that the most committed explorers are often the ones who make the greatest discoveries.

2. Patience

The second distinguished doctrine of followership is patience. I recently read an article by David Perell that talks about how we live in a microwave society. How can we get what we want faster, easier, and with less resistance?

Time is our most limited resource. So it makes sense that we’d want to maximize it. Except that impact and efficiency can’t be graphed in a linearly increasing fashion. What does that mean?

That just because something is faster doesn’t mean it’s more enjoyable. Or more effective. It’s the “measure twice, cut once” idea. Speed isn’t always naturally linked with success.

Great followers know this. That’s why their impact is measured, not by minutes, but by milestones. Some goals you can do in days. Some things, however, will take years. And when you understand that, you’ll release your need for instant gratification and will embrace a more long-arc idea of success.

3. Submission

This is where you might stop reading because no one likes this word. It just tastes funny in our mouths, like that questionable bagged salad you bought last week in the name of health but that you knew deep down was always destined for your trash can.

But let’s face this head-on. Submission. Not every voice gets to be the loudest. Not every decision gets equal input. Not every opinion gets equal opportunity.

Believing in submission doesn’t mean that you also have to embrace and support bigotry, sexism, racism, and any other systemic way of oppression that has been employed over the decades and centuries. But it does mean that you eventually will have to come to terms with the fact that you aren’t the alpha in every food chain.

So learning how to defer and support, how to elevate someone else instead of your own ideas, and how to truly serve someone for their good is a hallmark of a distinguished follower.

Submission doesn’t always have to make you weaker. Healthy and genuine submission can actually set you apart.

4. Lingering

We can sum up this doctrine by just saying that a distinguished follower is someone who stays. That doesn’t always mean that you have to stay in the exact iteration of what you are doing, because we are meant to grow and evolve and take on new challenges and reach new heights.

But it does mean that if everything around you is constantly changing, you might not be lingering enough.

In a world that is defined by constantly changing where you work, where you live, who you spend time with, and who you follow, someone who lingers in a non-creepy way will stand out.

5. Sacrifice

If you’re a leadership junkie, you’ve likely at one point in your journey been in love with the concept of 10,000 hours to mastery.

But what is the 10,000-hour rule in reality? It’s a way to measure our sacrifice. Which is actually antithetical to true sacrifice.

Sacrifice is being willing to lay something down without the promise of it being picked back up. It’s investing in something without knowing if that investment will pay off.

What are you losing right now that you might never get back? And I’m not talking about your hairline. What are you actively giving up that doesn’t have a direct payoff for you?

That’s sacrifice. And if you are doing that, you’re on your way to becoming a distinguished follower.

6. Listening

These next two go hand-in-hand, but I want to start with listening because the world is a loud place. It’s hard to truly listen when the constant hum and drum of noise is all around.

Listening isn’t just hearing. It’s hearing what’s important and hearing what isn’t. It’s elevating what needs to be louder and quieting what needs to fade away.

It sounds doable, but for people with as shortened attention spans as we have, it can be extremely harrowing.

Tell me, when’s the last time you listened to a full story someone told without interrupting? The last time you sat with your boss or parent or spouse, what were they really saying? Not the actual words, but the words beneath the words?

Can you discern the unspoken? If so, you might have a good hold on the doctrine of listening as you become a distinguished follower.

7. Asking

Here’s a simple question to determine this last doctrine: Do you ask more questions than you answer?

If not, you aren’t setting yourself up as a distinguished follower.

It’s not necessarily a numbers game as much as it is a style or type of attitude. If you answer more than you ask, you’re likely cultivating a sense of superiority. Of pride. Mastery is a myth and expertise is just a label we give people that we perceive are furthest ahead in a particular area.

But there is always more to learn. More to grow in. More to ask.

So, if you want to be a distinguished follower, ask more. Answer less.

You’ll Want Your Followers to Do These Things

There are a hundred reasons that we could explore of why following these doctrines would add benefit to your life. But, rather than list those out, let me just end with this.

Why should you want to become a distinguished follower? Because it’s what you would want for those people who will eventually be following you.

How do you know if someone is a great leader? You look at the quality of their followers. As Julius says to Gerry Bertier in Remember the Titans, “Attitude reflects leadership, captain.”

So, if you know you’d want your followers to practice these things, then let’s be people who are willing to practice what we’d expect from others.