When Followers Become Toxic
Few leaders realize how susceptible they are to their followers’ influence. A good set of values, some trusted friends, and a little paranoia can prevent them from being led astray.
by Lynn R. Offermann
Harvard Business Article
Douglas MacArthur once said, “A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.” Almost as he made that remark, his country’s president was proving the point. For in late 1961, John F. Kennedy, bowing to pressure from his advisers, agreed to the escalation of American intervention in Vietnam. Among the advisers pressuring him was the senior author of a report recommending military intervention. And that adviser’s trusted friend—an American general—was chosen by the president to lead the new U.S. command in Saigon. Given his loyalties, the general wanted to make sure things looked good on the surface, so he stifled evidence from the field about potential setbacks and obstacles in Vietnam, making it tough for the president to discern the truth.
That, according to author and journalist David Halberstam, was how President Kennedy and his advisers led the United States into Vietnam. The story starkly illustrates just how easily, and with the best of intentions, loyal and able followers can get their leaders into trouble. If an accomplished politician like Kennedy could be misled in this way, it’s no surprise that today’s business leaders often fall into the same trap. No matter who we are, we are all influenced by those around us. Some of us are leaders, but we are all followers. Indeed, Ken Lay, the disgraced ex-chairman of Enron, may not be entirely wrong in blaming unscrupulous subordinates and advisers for his company’s demise. As an executive coach to senior leaders in a variety of industries for more than 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand just how easily followers can derail executive careers.
How does it happen? In the following pages, I draw both on my experience as a consultant and executive coach and on decades of research in organizational psychology to describe when and why leaders become vulnerable to being led astray by their followers. In some cases, as the Kennedy story illustrates, effective leaders can end up making poor decisions because able and well-meaning followers are united and persuasive about a course of action. This is a particular problem for leaders who attract and empower strong followers; these leaders need to become more skeptical and set boundaries. At other times, leaders get into trouble because they are surrounded by followers who fool them with flattery and isolate them from uncomfortable realities. Charismatic leaders, who are most susceptible to this problem, need to make an extra effort to unearth disagreement and to find followers who are not afraid to pose hard questions. Charismatic or not, all leaders run the risk of delegating to unscrupulous followers. There’s probably little they can do to completely guard against a determined corporate Iago, but leaders who communicate and live a positive set of values will find themselves better protected.
When the Majority Rules
Although many leaders pride themselves on their willingness to take unpopular stands, research has consistently demonstrated that most people—including leaders—prefer conformity to controversy. And the pressure to conform rises with the degree of agreement among those around you. Even if widespread agreement doesn’t actually exist, the very appearance of it can be hard to resist.
One of the most striking pieces of evidence for this was a series of experiments conducted in the 1950s by psychologist Solomon Asch. Asch showed participants a vertical line and then asked them to judge which of three other lines was most similar in length to the test line. Participants who made judgments on their own chose the correct answer 99% of the time. Yet when other participants answered as part of a group in which fake respondents had been coached to pick a particular incorrect line, almost three-quarters of the unknowing participants made at least one wrong choice and one-third of them conformed to the group choice half the time.
It’s worth noting that the participants conformed without any pressure from the fake respondents. Indeed, the fake respondents were strangers whom the participants were unlikely to see ever again. In workplace situations where continued interactions are expected and where there may be concern about possible loss of face, one would reasonably expect conformity to be even more marked. What’s more, most business decisions are urgent, complex, and ambiguous, which encourages people to depend on the views of others. We should hardly be surprised, therefore, to find that the ethical and capable individuals who served on the boards of companies like WorldCom and Enron turned “into credulous, compliant apparatchiks more focused on maintaining collegiality than maximizing long-term profitability,” as the Washington Post put it.
What happens is that leaders faced with a united opposition can start to question their own judgment. And they should question themselves—the reason that unanimity is such a powerful influencing force is simply that the majority often is right. In general, research shows that using social proof—what others think or do—to determine our behavior leads us to make fewer mistakes than opposing the majority view does. But as even the smartest leaders have had to learn the hard way, the majority can be spectacularly wrong.
One reason that even well-informed experts so often follow the crowd is that people by nature tend to be what psychologists call “cognitive misers,” preferring the shortcuts of automatic thinking over considered examination. These shortcuts can help us to process information more quickly but can also lead to monumental errors. For instance, product designers may assume that if they like a product, everyone will. Yet the flop of Dell’s Olympic line of desktop and workstation computers taught managers there that products must appeal to more than the company’s own technically savvy workforce. As Michael Dell put it, “We had gone ahead and created a product that was, for all intents and purposes, technology for technology’s sake rather than technology for the customer’s sake.”
Cognitive miserliness can be reinforced by culture. In the United States, for instance, Americans have long tolerated—even encouraged—people who form and express quick opinions. It is not a reflective society. Americans like to brainstorm and move on. That shortcut mentality can be particularly dangerous if the opinions are presented publicly, because people will then advance their views tenaciously.
In such public forums, it falls to the leader to push followers to examine their opinions more closely. Alfred P. Sloan, the former chairman of GM, understood this very well. He once said at the close of an executive meeting: “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here. I propose we postpone further discussion until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
Another factor contributing to the power of the majority is that leaders worry about undermining their employees’ commitment. This is a reasonable concern. Leaders do need to be careful about spending their political capital, and overruling employees one too many times can demotivate them. Indeed, there are times when going along with the majority to win commitment is more important than making the “right” decision. (For more on when it’s wise to go along with the majority, see the sidebar “Joining the Opposition.”) But other times, leaders need to listen instead to the single, shy voice in the background, or even to their own internal doubts. As Rosalynn Carter once said, “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.” In going against the tide, the leader will sometimes boost rather than undermine his or her credibility.
Joining the Opposition
Fooled by Flattery
Being swept along by their followers isn’t the only form of influence that leaders need to be wary of. Sometimes, follower influence takes the subtler and gentler form of ingratiation. Most people learn very early in life that a good way to get people to like you is to show that you like them. Flattery, favors, and frequent compliments all tend to win people over. Leaders, naturally, like those who like them and are more apt to let those they are fond of influence them.
For their part, followers think that being on the boss’s good side gives them some measure of job security. To an extent, they’re probably right; even a recent Forbes guide to surviving office parties recommends: “Try to ingratiate yourself. In this market, people are hired and kept at their companies for their personal skills.” Indeed, a recent study indicated that successful ingratiators gained a 5% edge over other employees in performance evaluations. This kind of margin by itself won’t get someone ahead, but in a competitive market, it might well tip the scale toward one of two people up for a promotion.
Everyone loves a sincere compliment, but those who already think highly of themselves are most susceptible to flattery’s charms. In particular, leaders predisposed toward narcissism may find their narcissistic tendencies pushed to unhealthy levels when they are given heavy doses of follower ingratiation. Gratuitous ingratiation can create a subtle shift in a leader’s attitude toward power. Instead of viewing power as something to be used in the service of the organization, clients, and stakeholders, the leader treats it as a tool to further personal interests, sometimes at the expense of others in and outside the organization. This happens as a leader starts to truly believe his press and comes to feel more entitled to privileges than others. People often cite Jack Welch’s retirement deal as an example of executive entitlement gone haywire. The resulting furor drew public scorn for a longstanding corporate icon.
But one of the most serious problems for leaders who invite flattery is that they insulate themselves from the bad news they need to know. In her memoir, Nancy Reagan relates how then–Vice President George Bush approached her with concerns about Chief of Staff Donald Regan. Mrs. Reagan said she wished he’d tell her husband, but Bush replied that it was not his role to do so. “That’s exactly your role,” she snapped. Yet followers who have witnessed the killing of previous messengers of unwelcome news will be unlikely to volunteer for the role. Samuel Goldwyn’s words resonate strongly: “I want you to tell me exactly what’s wrong with me and with MGM even if it means losing your job.” As more staff ingratiate or hold back criticism, the perception of staff unanimity, often at the expense of the organization’s health, increases as well.
The rare individual who won’t join an ingratiating inner circle of followers is typically seen as a bad apple by both the leader and her peers. Even when this perception problem is acknowledged, it is tough to fix. Despite widespread publicity after the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster about the dangers of failing to attend to negative news, NASA is once again facing charges of having downplayed possible liftoff problems just before the Columbia disaster. In both cases, engineers allegedly did not inform senior NASA executives of safety concerns; they either withheld information or presented it in ways that diminished its importance or feasibility. Obviously, this tendency to withhold information is not limited to government agencies. Bill Ford, the new CEO of Ford Motor Company, believes that isolation at the top has been a big problem at Ford—a problem he has spent considerable time trying to rectify by a variety of means, including forcing debate and discussion among executives and having informal, impromptu discussions with employees at all levels.
In dealing with ingratiation, leaders need to begin by reflecting on how they respond to both flattery and criticism. In considering a follower’s advice or opinion, ask yourself if you would respond differently if a staff member you disliked made the same comment, and why. Are followers really free to voice their honest assessments, or are they jumped on whenever they deviate from your opinions? Bill Ford makes a point of thanking people whom he has overruled because he wants them to know that their honesty is appreciated. One simple test of whether you’re getting the feedback you need is to count how many employees challenge you at your next staff meeting. As Steven Kerr, chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs, says: “If you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target.”
Organizational mechanisms can also help. Greater exposure to external feedback from clients, well-run 360-degree feedback programs, and executive coaching may be more likely to reveal the full truth. It’s hard to lead from a pedestal; open channels of communication can keep a leader far better grounded.
For honest feedback, some CEOs rely on longtime associates or family members, people who may even take pleasure at times in letting some of the air out of the executive’s balloon. (Your teenage children might particularly enjoy this, though they might not have as much insight into your business). Bill Gates, for instance, has said that he talks to his wife, Melinda, every night about work-related issues. In particular, he credits her with helping him handle the transition period when he turned over the Microsoft CEO title to his old friend Steve Ballmer. Ballmer, too, has been one of Gates’s closest advisers. Gates says of this peer relationship with Ballmer: “It’s important to have someone whom you totally trust, who is totally committed, who shares your vision, and yet who has a little bit different set of skills and who also acts as something of a check on you.” And Gates’s well-known friendship with fellow billionaire and bridge buddy Warren Buffett serves as a sounding board for both men. Disney’s Michael Eisner had a similar relationship with Frank Wells, until Wells’s death in 1994, with Wells enjoying the role of devil’s advocate, challenging Eisner to ensure that the best decisions got made.
In his book You’re Too Kind, journalist Richard Stengel gives an account of flattery through the ages, noting that “the history of how ministers have used flattery to control leaders did not begin with Henry Kissinger’s relentless and unctuous toadying to Richard Nixon…. Cardinal Richelieu was a famous user of flattery…and he was a famous sucker for it himself.” Stengel argues that corporate VPs who suck up to their bosses are no different than the less powerful chimpanzees who subordinate themselves to more powerful ones in the animal world. Though it may feel great at the time, stroking a leader’s ego too much, and protecting him or her from needed information, can have negative consequences for both the leader and the organization. It’s worth remembering the words of cartoonist Hank Ketchum: “Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it, but don’t swallow it.”
Powers Behind the Throne
Caught between the Scylla of follower unanimity and the Charybdis of flattery, leaders might be tempted to keep their followers at a distance. But in today’s world, this is simply not an option. CEOs of major firms cannot know everything about their own organizations. In coaching senior executives, I often hear them lamenting that they don’t have full knowledge of what’s happening in their companies. They report sleepless nights because they’ve been forced to make decisions based on incomplete information. They must rely on others for full, accurate, and unbiased input as well as for many operational decisions.
From the follower’s point of view, this presents wonderful opportunities. He can learn and practice new skills as the leader relies on him more and more, and he may be presented with new opportunities for advancement and reward. At the same time, however, it opens the door for the occasional follower who uses his newfound power to serve his own interests more than the company’s.
So how can leaders guard against that problem? They can begin by keeping ethical values and corporate vision front and center when delegating and monitoring work. Only then can they be certain that followers have a clear framework and boundaries for their actions. As Baxter CEO Harry Kraemer says, the key to ensuring that followers do the right thing is “open communication of values…over and over and over again.”
Six Ways to Counter Wayward Influences
Leaders can also protect themselves and their companies by setting good examples. Followers—especially ingratiators—tend to model themselves after their leaders. Thus, straightforward leaders are less likely to be manipulated than manipulative leaders are. And a leader who is seen to condone or encourage unethical behavior will almost certainly get unethical behavior in his ranks. Take the case of former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, who allegedly ridiculed attempts to institute a corporate code of conduct as a waste of time even as he pressed his followers to deliver double-digit growth. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find that junior WorldCom executives cooked the books or at least turned a blind eye when others did.
Although competency is generally a good basis on which to grant followers greater influence, leaders need to avoid letting followers influence them based on competency alone. As W. Michael Blumenthal, former chairman and CEO of Unisys, once said, “When did I make my greatest hiring mistakes? When I put intelligence and energy ahead of morality.” The danger here is that astute but unscrupulous followers can find ways of pushing their leaders in unethical directions and may even use the leader’s stated values against him. Suggestions like “I know you like saving money, so you’ll love the idea of…,” followed by a shady proposal, force leaders into the position of having to choose between eating their words and accepting the proposal.
At the end of the day, leaders have to rely on their instincts about people. Fortunately, there is good news in this respect. Research by psychologist Robert Zajonc suggests that we process information both affectively and cognitively and that we experience our feeling toward something a split second before we intellectualize it. If leaders are attentive, therefore, they may be able to tune in to a fleeting feeling that something is not quite right or that they are being manipulated before they rationalize and accept what they would be better off rejecting. For example, one tactic favored by manipulative followers is to create a false sense of urgency to rush the leader into an uninformed decision. Recognizing that you’re being pushed too fast and reserving judgment for a time may save you from an action you may regret.
It’s not only the people you delegate to that you have to watch, it’s also what you delegate. Clearly, leaders can never delegate their own responsibilities without peril. Smart leaders understand that even well-intentioned followers have their own ambitions and may try to usurp tasks that properly belong to their leaders. Harry Stonecipher, now CEO of Boeing, likes to point to the great polar explorer Ernest Shackleton as an example of a leader who knew what responsibilities he could and couldn’t afford to delegate. Stranded on an ice pack and crossing 800 miles of stormy seas in an open boat, Shackleton knew the deadly consequences of dissension and therefore focused his attention on preserving his team’s unity. He was happy to delegate many essential tasks to subordinates, even putting one man in charge of 22 others at a camp while he sailed off with the remainder of the crew to get assistance. But the one task he reserved for himself was the management of malcontents, whom he kept close by at all times. Amazingly, the entire crew survived the more than 15-month ordeal in fairly good health, and eight members even joined Shackleton on a subsequent expedition.
By understanding how followers are capable of influencing them, top executives can improve their leadership skills. They can choose to lead by steadfastly refusing to fall prey to manipulative forces and try to guide the way toward more open and appropriate communications.
Followers, for their part, can better understand their power to inappropriately influence leaders. Once they recognize the danger they pose to their leaders—and ultimately to themselves—ingratiators may come to realize that isolating leaders from reality can be as costly to themselves as to the company’s shareholders. Realizing the value of dissent may force followers to take more care in forming and promoting their opinions.
Understanding that some tasks are best left to a leader may help followers to know where to stop and leaders to know what not to give away. In the final analysis, honest followers have just as great an investment in unmasking manipulative colleagues as their leaders do.
That, according to author and journalist David Halberstam, was how President Kennedy and his advisers led the United States into Vietnam. The story starkly illustrates just how easily, and with the best of intentions, loyal and able followers can get their leaders into trouble. If an accomplished politician like Kennedy could be misled in this way, it’s no surprise that today’s business leaders often fall into the same trap. No matter who we are, we are all influenced by those around us. Some of us are leaders, but we are all followers. Indeed, Ken Lay, the disgraced ex-chairman of Enron, may not be entirely wrong in blaming unscrupulous subordinates and advisers for his company’s demise. As an executive coach to senior leaders in a variety of industries for more than 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand just how easily followers can derail executive careers.
How does it happen? In the following pages, I draw both on my experience as a consultant and executive coach and on decades of research in organizational psychology to describe when and why leaders become vulnerable to being led astray by their followers. In some cases, as the Kennedy story illustrates, effective leaders can end up making poor decisions because able and well-meaning followers are united and persuasive about a course of action. This is a particular problem for leaders who attract and empower strong followers; these leaders need to become more skeptical and set boundaries. At other times, leaders get into trouble because they are surrounded by followers who fool them with flattery and isolate them from uncomfortable realities. Charismatic leaders, who are most susceptible to this problem, need to make an extra effort to unearth disagreement and to find followers who are not afraid to pose hard questions. Charismatic or not, all leaders run the risk of delegating to unscrupulous followers. There’s probably little they can do to completely guard against a determined corporate Iago, but leaders who communicate and live a positive set of values will find themselves better protected.
When the Majority Rules
Although many leaders pride themselves on their willingness to take unpopular stands, research has consistently demonstrated that most people—including leaders—prefer conformity to controversy. And the pressure to conform rises with the degree of agreement among those around you. Even if widespread agreement doesn’t actually exist, the very appearance of it can be hard to resist.
| People tend to be what psychologists call “cognitive misers,” preferring the shortcuts of automatic thinking over considered examination. |
One of the most striking pieces of evidence for this was a series of experiments conducted in the 1950s by psychologist Solomon Asch. Asch showed participants a vertical line and then asked them to judge which of three other lines was most similar in length to the test line. Participants who made judgments on their own chose the correct answer 99% of the time. Yet when other participants answered as part of a group in which fake respondents had been coached to pick a particular incorrect line, almost three-quarters of the unknowing participants made at least one wrong choice and one-third of them conformed to the group choice half the time.
It’s worth noting that the participants conformed without any pressure from the fake respondents. Indeed, the fake respondents were strangers whom the participants were unlikely to see ever again. In workplace situations where continued interactions are expected and where there may be concern about possible loss of face, one would reasonably expect conformity to be even more marked. What’s more, most business decisions are urgent, complex, and ambiguous, which encourages people to depend on the views of others. We should hardly be surprised, therefore, to find that the ethical and capable individuals who served on the boards of companies like WorldCom and Enron turned “into credulous, compliant apparatchiks more focused on maintaining collegiality than maximizing long-term profitability,” as the Washington Post put it.
What happens is that leaders faced with a united opposition can start to question their own judgment. And they should question themselves—the reason that unanimity is such a powerful influencing force is simply that the majority often is right. In general, research shows that using social proof—what others think or do—to determine our behavior leads us to make fewer mistakes than opposing the majority view does. But as even the smartest leaders have had to learn the hard way, the majority can be spectacularly wrong.
One reason that even well-informed experts so often follow the crowd is that people by nature tend to be what psychologists call “cognitive misers,” preferring the shortcuts of automatic thinking over considered examination. These shortcuts can help us to process information more quickly but can also lead to monumental errors. For instance, product designers may assume that if they like a product, everyone will. Yet the flop of Dell’s Olympic line of desktop and workstation computers taught managers there that products must appeal to more than the company’s own technically savvy workforce. As Michael Dell put it, “We had gone ahead and created a product that was, for all intents and purposes, technology for technology’s sake rather than technology for the customer’s sake.”
Cognitive miserliness can be reinforced by culture. In the United States, for instance, Americans have long tolerated—even encouraged—people who form and express quick opinions. It is not a reflective society. Americans like to brainstorm and move on. That shortcut mentality can be particularly dangerous if the opinions are presented publicly, because people will then advance their views tenaciously.
In such public forums, it falls to the leader to push followers to examine their opinions more closely. Alfred P. Sloan, the former chairman of GM, understood this very well. He once said at the close of an executive meeting: “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here. I propose we postpone further discussion until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
Another factor contributing to the power of the majority is that leaders worry about undermining their employees’ commitment. This is a reasonable concern. Leaders do need to be careful about spending their political capital, and overruling employees one too many times can demotivate them. Indeed, there are times when going along with the majority to win commitment is more important than making the “right” decision. (For more on when it’s wise to go along with the majority, see the sidebar “Joining the Opposition.”) But other times, leaders need to listen instead to the single, shy voice in the background, or even to their own internal doubts. As Rosalynn Carter once said, “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.” In going against the tide, the leader will sometimes boost rather than undermine his or her credibility.
Joining the Opposition Fooled by Flattery
Being swept along by their followers isn’t the only form of influence that leaders need to be wary of. Sometimes, follower influence takes the subtler and gentler form of ingratiation. Most people learn very early in life that a good way to get people to like you is to show that you like them. Flattery, favors, and frequent compliments all tend to win people over. Leaders, naturally, like those who like them and are more apt to let those they are fond of influence them.
For their part, followers think that being on the boss’s good side gives them some measure of job security. To an extent, they’re probably right; even a recent Forbes guide to surviving office parties recommends: “Try to ingratiate yourself. In this market, people are hired and kept at their companies for their personal skills.” Indeed, a recent study indicated that successful ingratiators gained a 5% edge over other employees in performance evaluations. This kind of margin by itself won’t get someone ahead, but in a competitive market, it might well tip the scale toward one of two people up for a promotion.
Everyone loves a sincere compliment, but those who already think highly of themselves are most susceptible to flattery’s charms. In particular, leaders predisposed toward narcissism may find their narcissistic tendencies pushed to unhealthy levels when they are given heavy doses of follower ingratiation. Gratuitous ingratiation can create a subtle shift in a leader’s attitude toward power. Instead of viewing power as something to be used in the service of the organization, clients, and stakeholders, the leader treats it as a tool to further personal interests, sometimes at the expense of others in and outside the organization. This happens as a leader starts to truly believe his press and comes to feel more entitled to privileges than others. People often cite Jack Welch’s retirement deal as an example of executive entitlement gone haywire. The resulting furor drew public scorn for a longstanding corporate icon.
But one of the most serious problems for leaders who invite flattery is that they insulate themselves from the bad news they need to know. In her memoir, Nancy Reagan relates how then–Vice President George Bush approached her with concerns about Chief of Staff Donald Regan. Mrs. Reagan said she wished he’d tell her husband, but Bush replied that it was not his role to do so. “That’s exactly your role,” she snapped. Yet followers who have witnessed the killing of previous messengers of unwelcome news will be unlikely to volunteer for the role. Samuel Goldwyn’s words resonate strongly: “I want you to tell me exactly what’s wrong with me and with MGM even if it means losing your job.” As more staff ingratiate or hold back criticism, the perception of staff unanimity, often at the expense of the organization’s health, increases as well.
The rare individual who won’t join an ingratiating inner circle of followers is typically seen as a bad apple by both the leader and her peers. Even when this perception problem is acknowledged, it is tough to fix. Despite widespread publicity after the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster about the dangers of failing to attend to negative news, NASA is once again facing charges of having downplayed possible liftoff problems just before the Columbia disaster. In both cases, engineers allegedly did not inform senior NASA executives of safety concerns; they either withheld information or presented it in ways that diminished its importance or feasibility. Obviously, this tendency to withhold information is not limited to government agencies. Bill Ford, the new CEO of Ford Motor Company, believes that isolation at the top has been a big problem at Ford—a problem he has spent considerable time trying to rectify by a variety of means, including forcing debate and discussion among executives and having informal, impromptu discussions with employees at all levels.
In dealing with ingratiation, leaders need to begin by reflecting on how they respond to both flattery and criticism. In considering a follower’s advice or opinion, ask yourself if you would respond differently if a staff member you disliked made the same comment, and why. Are followers really free to voice their honest assessments, or are they jumped on whenever they deviate from your opinions? Bill Ford makes a point of thanking people whom he has overruled because he wants them to know that their honesty is appreciated. One simple test of whether you’re getting the feedback you need is to count how many employees challenge you at your next staff meeting. As Steven Kerr, chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs, says: “If you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target.”
Organizational mechanisms can also help. Greater exposure to external feedback from clients, well-run 360-degree feedback programs, and executive coaching may be more likely to reveal the full truth. It’s hard to lead from a pedestal; open channels of communication can keep a leader far better grounded.
For honest feedback, some CEOs rely on longtime associates or family members, people who may even take pleasure at times in letting some of the air out of the executive’s balloon. (Your teenage children might particularly enjoy this, though they might not have as much insight into your business). Bill Gates, for instance, has said that he talks to his wife, Melinda, every night about work-related issues. In particular, he credits her with helping him handle the transition period when he turned over the Microsoft CEO title to his old friend Steve Ballmer. Ballmer, too, has been one of Gates’s closest advisers. Gates says of this peer relationship with Ballmer: “It’s important to have someone whom you totally trust, who is totally committed, who shares your vision, and yet who has a little bit different set of skills and who also acts as something of a check on you.” And Gates’s well-known friendship with fellow billionaire and bridge buddy Warren Buffett serves as a sounding board for both men. Disney’s Michael Eisner had a similar relationship with Frank Wells, until Wells’s death in 1994, with Wells enjoying the role of devil’s advocate, challenging Eisner to ensure that the best decisions got made.
In his book You’re Too Kind, journalist Richard Stengel gives an account of flattery through the ages, noting that “the history of how ministers have used flattery to control leaders did not begin with Henry Kissinger’s relentless and unctuous toadying to Richard Nixon…. Cardinal Richelieu was a famous user of flattery…and he was a famous sucker for it himself.” Stengel argues that corporate VPs who suck up to their bosses are no different than the less powerful chimpanzees who subordinate themselves to more powerful ones in the animal world. Though it may feel great at the time, stroking a leader’s ego too much, and protecting him or her from needed information, can have negative consequences for both the leader and the organization. It’s worth remembering the words of cartoonist Hank Ketchum: “Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it, but don’t swallow it.”
| It’s worth remembering the words of cartoonist Hank Ketchum: “Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it, but don’t swallow it.” |
Powers Behind the Throne
Caught between the Scylla of follower unanimity and the Charybdis of flattery, leaders might be tempted to keep their followers at a distance. But in today’s world, this is simply not an option. CEOs of major firms cannot know everything about their own organizations. In coaching senior executives, I often hear them lamenting that they don’t have full knowledge of what’s happening in their companies. They report sleepless nights because they’ve been forced to make decisions based on incomplete information. They must rely on others for full, accurate, and unbiased input as well as for many operational decisions.
From the follower’s point of view, this presents wonderful opportunities. He can learn and practice new skills as the leader relies on him more and more, and he may be presented with new opportunities for advancement and reward. At the same time, however, it opens the door for the occasional follower who uses his newfound power to serve his own interests more than the company’s.
So how can leaders guard against that problem? They can begin by keeping ethical values and corporate vision front and center when delegating and monitoring work. Only then can they be certain that followers have a clear framework and boundaries for their actions. As Baxter CEO Harry Kraemer says, the key to ensuring that followers do the right thing is “open communication of values…over and over and over again.”
Six Ways to Counter Wayward Influences Leaders can also protect themselves and their companies by setting good examples. Followers—especially ingratiators—tend to model themselves after their leaders. Thus, straightforward leaders are less likely to be manipulated than manipulative leaders are. And a leader who is seen to condone or encourage unethical behavior will almost certainly get unethical behavior in his ranks. Take the case of former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, who allegedly ridiculed attempts to institute a corporate code of conduct as a waste of time even as he pressed his followers to deliver double-digit growth. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find that junior WorldCom executives cooked the books or at least turned a blind eye when others did.
Although competency is generally a good basis on which to grant followers greater influence, leaders need to avoid letting followers influence them based on competency alone. As W. Michael Blumenthal, former chairman and CEO of Unisys, once said, “When did I make my greatest hiring mistakes? When I put intelligence and energy ahead of morality.” The danger here is that astute but unscrupulous followers can find ways of pushing their leaders in unethical directions and may even use the leader’s stated values against him. Suggestions like “I know you like saving money, so you’ll love the idea of…,” followed by a shady proposal, force leaders into the position of having to choose between eating their words and accepting the proposal.
At the end of the day, leaders have to rely on their instincts about people. Fortunately, there is good news in this respect. Research by psychologist Robert Zajonc suggests that we process information both affectively and cognitively and that we experience our feeling toward something a split second before we intellectualize it. If leaders are attentive, therefore, they may be able to tune in to a fleeting feeling that something is not quite right or that they are being manipulated before they rationalize and accept what they would be better off rejecting. For example, one tactic favored by manipulative followers is to create a false sense of urgency to rush the leader into an uninformed decision. Recognizing that you’re being pushed too fast and reserving judgment for a time may save you from an action you may regret.
It’s not only the people you delegate to that you have to watch, it’s also what you delegate. Clearly, leaders can never delegate their own responsibilities without peril. Smart leaders understand that even well-intentioned followers have their own ambitions and may try to usurp tasks that properly belong to their leaders. Harry Stonecipher, now CEO of Boeing, likes to point to the great polar explorer Ernest Shackleton as an example of a leader who knew what responsibilities he could and couldn’t afford to delegate. Stranded on an ice pack and crossing 800 miles of stormy seas in an open boat, Shackleton knew the deadly consequences of dissension and therefore focused his attention on preserving his team’s unity. He was happy to delegate many essential tasks to subordinates, even putting one man in charge of 22 others at a camp while he sailed off with the remainder of the crew to get assistance. But the one task he reserved for himself was the management of malcontents, whom he kept close by at all times. Amazingly, the entire crew survived the more than 15-month ordeal in fairly good health, and eight members even joined Shackleton on a subsequent expedition.
| One simple test of whether you’re getting the feedback you need is to count how many employees challenge you at your next staff meeting. |
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By understanding how followers are capable of influencing them, top executives can improve their leadership skills. They can choose to lead by steadfastly refusing to fall prey to manipulative forces and try to guide the way toward more open and appropriate communications.
Followers, for their part, can better understand their power to inappropriately influence leaders. Once they recognize the danger they pose to their leaders—and ultimately to themselves—ingratiators may come to realize that isolating leaders from reality can be as costly to themselves as to the company’s shareholders. Realizing the value of dissent may force followers to take more care in forming and promoting their opinions.
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