Walk into most organisations, and you will find leadership teams, leadership committees and leadership tracks. We use words like "bad leader" or "ineffective leadership" without a thought about how absurd it all is.

1. Action Twelve
LEADERSHIP
There is no such thing as a bad leader…

2. Action Twelve
Leaders have followers
Rule

3. Action Twelve
Leaders
have followers
It is incredible how much we complicate leadership.
Do a google search for the word "leadership", and
in under half a second you will be presented with
over 1.9 billion results. Leadership is one of those
critical concepts in our society, and we spend
considerable energy and resources to understand
leaders, leadership and how to replicate, emulate
and create leaders.
Walk into most organisations, and you will find
leadership teams, leadership committees and
leadership tracks. We use words like "bad leader"
or "ineffective leadership" without a thought about
how absurd it all is.
Leaders to be leaders and to conduct leadership
must have followers. Followers, people who follow
leaders, let that sink in. There are no bad leaders,
you either have followers, or you don't. Sure, you
may be a leader for good or bad or whatever, but
there is no such thing as a bad leader. Hitler was a
great leader, did horrible things, and both himself
and his followers paid the price in the end, but there
is no disputing that he was a leader.
Many people find themselves in so-called
"leadership positions". We impose these people on
others through a hierarchy, organisational charts
and other such instruments and give them
leadership titles. None of these acts make that
person a leader. Even if you have a hundred
people below you on the organisational chart does
not make you a leader. They may follow your
orders and do what you say, but that does not mean
they follow you, they are most likely your
subordinates, trapped through circumstance and
unable to leave. When we impose leadership, no
amount of leadership coaching can fix it.
There is something genuinely crazy going on.
These days most of us live and believe in
democratic principles, yet in places where we spend
most of our time, workplaces, such principles are
thrown out. To make us feel all warm and fuzzy,
we are subjected to pseudo-leadership, an imposed
authority that we neither follow or leave. So most of
us pretend to follow until we lose patience and go.
Please don't misunderstand, there are genuine
leaders in our organisations, but that has very
little to do with their title and everything to do
with who they are.
• Understanding who people follow…
• Understanding why they follow them…
• Creating people into leaders requires
changing who they are, don’t do this.
Teaching leadership is like teaching love,
it is pointless.
Think differently by

4. Action Twelve
Leader’s ideology meets context
Rule

5. Action Twelve
Leader’s ideology
meets context
Having followers is what makes leaders, but how
does the leader get followers? The formula for
getting followers starts with the leader's ideology
and context within which the leader operates.
Ideology is a set of beliefs and values. Those
beliefs and values need a fertile context, within
which followers recognise leaders and start
following them.
To understand why context is critical, let us
compare two leaders. Consider Phil Jackson, ex
Chicago Bulls coach and Martin Luther King. Both
of these people are undoubtedly leaders. Now
imagine reversing their roles. No matter how
talented Martin Luther King is as a leader, it is hard
to believe he would gain the type of success Phil
Jackson did with Chicago Bulls. Jack Walsh was
able to transform GE in large part because the
economic climate he inherited was one of the high-
interest rates, high unemployment and economy in
recession. GE's context was one where change
was critical for survival and Jack Walsh’s ideology
of efficient and effective organisation was a great
match.
Getting followers is easier in environments where
people feel threatened. It is much harder to get
people to follow leaders purely out of alignment of
the leader's ideology with that of followers.
We will see later, how vision and courage are
critical ingredients required to acquire followers
without threatening their safety.
Within most organisations, the choice is to follow,
hide or leave. It is tough to understand why people
are still at their jobs. Are they genuinely being led
or are they hiding, following orders because
through circumstances they are unable to leave.
Kim Kardashian undoubtedly has followers, many
millions of followers, because of her ideology and
context she finds herself in. Consumerism and
instant gratification in the western world have
reached such drastic extremes that celebrities with
nothing more than a lifestyle full of material
possessions and body stereotypes can generate
millions of followers searching for that same
lifestyle. Ideology and context meet and leaders
are born.
Leaders essentially bring their self, their
ideology to the right place at the right time.
• Understanding that successful leaders in one
context are not guaranteed to be successful
when context changes.
• Studying leaders, study them in terms of the
context they work within and how their
ideology matches that context.
Think differently by

6. Action Twelve
A leader has a vision of the future
Rule

7. Action Twelve
A leader has a
vision of the future
Every successful leader tells a story about the
future. Even leaders that perpetuate the status quo
describe a future where change is resisted. Without
this story, followers are unable to apply and
understand how the leader's ideology and context
they are in make sense. It is through the vision of
the future that followers project their personal
experience forward and understand what it means
to follow the leader.
Ideology and context are pre-requisites for people
to seek a different future than the one they envision.
The vision of the future presented by the leader
offers a plausible pathway forward.
Leader's vision of the future both provides and
enables hope. Without hope, people can't follow.
They can't follow because they can't view tomorrow
as plausible.
The vision is critical to getting followers for one
other fundamental reason. Having a vision of the
future makes the leader smaller than the vision the
leader describes. The leader is unable to bring this
future to be without followers, without help from
others. This admission of fault or inability to create
the very future the leader is proposing makes
followers feel valued, necessary and essential.
Hope and value create a powerful combination.
Within our organisations, when people feel
replaceable, they won't feel valued. There are no
leaders within groups of people that feel they can
be replaced, that their sole existence is not
essential to the leader's success. Again, let us not
confuse doing what others want out of fear as
leadership.
We generally view people as competitive and out to
achieve their own goals. Humans are neither
stronger, faster or the agilest of creatures. Our
secret is co-operation with one another. It is this
co-operation that made us dominant species on the
planet, where we competed with other species for
resources. But, now that we have achieved
dominion over other species, we sometimes forget
that even though we are competitive, it is co-
operation that has made us successful. Leaders
and their vision bring this co-operative spirit
forward, where followers can align behind the vision
and through working together bring it to life.
Leader’s vision is the pathway to co-operation
of followers towards a hopeful future.
• Testing if leaders need followers to bring the
vision to life.
• Understanding that followers are more
important than leaders
• Seeing visions as bigger then leaders that
allow followers to feel valued.
Think differently by

8. Action Twelve
Leaders model courage
Rule

9. Action Twelve
Leaders model
courage
The last part of the leadership puzzle is action. For
the vision of the future presented by the leader to
come to reality, there must be action taken by the
followers. Below is a model of how people convert
information to action. The middle steps are
guarded by an individual's worldview, self-image
and future expectations. These things generate
automatic thoughts that filter how information
eventually results in action. Future visions require
change, even to maintain the status-quo. Our
environment continually changes if nothing else but
due to entropy.
For people to change their automatic thoughts
requires courage. Leaders model this courage, by
taking the heat, sacrificing themselves, showing
that path to new dreams. This is the hardest part
of being a leader. Followers must see their leader
struggle as they do, with the courage to do the hard
work.
Leaders who temporarily acquire followers but
don't model courage to take the actions
required will not stay leaders for long.
• As a leader, doing the work, period…
Think differently by
World View
Self Image
Future Expectations
ActionConclusionProcessingObservationInformation Outcome
Automatic Thoughts

10. Action Twelve
Leaders have followersRule
Leader’s ideology meets context
Leaders model courage
Leader has a vision of the future
Rule
Rule
Rule