I was thinking about the time, energy and effort we put into making people more effective leaders. People have made careers out of it although it seems – to me at least – like Mexican food. Helen Amery called it out the other day as a volume issue.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to just make people better followers? There’s a whole suite of followship skills which LnD could market:

• Developing trust with insincere people
• Learning to believe anything/everything someone says
• Being inspired by uninspirational people
• Being passionate in an uncommitted environment
• Understanding mixed messages
• Working with indecisive people
• Taking blame with confidence
• Appreciating the learning points of the excessive workload
• Giving up ideas for the credit of others
• Working without praise
• Being manipulated with appreciation

Followship skills can be delivered at scale, will be cheaper than leadership development and can be forced through with hierarchical and authoritarian process.

We wouldn’t do this – it’s both unethical and highly dysfunctional and completely outside the LnD ethic.

However, isn’t followship what business wants?