The (in)capacity to Follow

A new season of 'The Apprentice (UK)' has started (BBC One, Wednesdays 9-10pm GMT). While I do not care much for reality TV, I find this one to be compulsive viewing. And one I would definitely recommend any student of organisational dynamics to watch.

Here is how it works: Around 20 candidates start an elimination process, whereby one will get a "six-figure salary job" working for Lord Sugar (in the US version, the employer is Donald Trump). The process is a series of tasks or challenges, in which the candidates, split in two teams, compete against each other. For every task, each team has to select one of its members to be project manager, and lead the team. These tasks can be about developing an advertising campaign for a new type of fizzy drink, organising an auction for a charity, selling works of art by budding new artists, making and selling soup from a market stall, and so on. Typically, the team that generates the most profit wins and is safe for another week, but from the losing team one candidate will be fired - meaning: has to leave the show. After 19 weeks, the last man or woman standing gets the job.

There is a paradox in the show's title: although Lord Sugar is deemed to look for a new 'apprentice', someone to whom he can be mentor and coach, in reality he invariably tests leadership skills, the ability to convince others, to sell, to graft. Which is clearly understood by the candidates, a motley crew of alpha males and females who all think themselves to be the best thing since sliced bread, the kind of innate leader Lord Sugar is looking for to head up one of his business units; by definition second to none of the other candidates.

As a result they're constantly jockeying for position, especially when the task at hand is something they have had some remote experience with, which then leads them to claim unquestionable expertise - and hence leadership - in the matter. And here is where it all gets interesting: The candidates' inflated self-image (and obvious self-interest relative to the final outcome of the entire process) usually results in some subversive behaviour on the part of team members relative to their project manager. Which eventually turns to bad-mouthing and backstabbing and on occasion into open conflict. Even though they must realise that such behaviour puts the team result in jeopardy, and therefore puts themselves at risk of being fired.

Why is it that people applying themselves to be leaders, have such difficulties at following someone else's lead?

For all the wisdom in books, courses and workshops on leadership, there are literally but two handfuls of books - and zero courses - on followership, even though it must be clear to all that without followers there can be no leaders! 

In the words of Derek Sivers: "the first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader".

My research into followership styles and behaviours (subject of my doctoral thesis) reveals that these are not but effects of leadership styles and behaviours - a widely made assumption in leadership theories and models. Instead, followership styles and behaviours may be developed and nurtured in their own right, independently from leadership!

Watching programs like The Apprentice, I'm certainly encouraged by the apparent need for training and development of follower skills.