Chapter 4: The Courage to Challenge

OVERVIEW

Followers who provide robust support for leaders are in a strong position to challenge them when their actions threaten the common purpose. Of the two broad areas in which we must be willing to challenge a leader—behavior and policies—the most difficult is behavior. It truly requires courage.

When I joined a struggling nonprofit organization, its entrepreneurial executive director had a plan to convert it into the marketing arm of a for-profit start-up. He had raised several hundred thousand dollars of venture capital and it seemed to him a good solution to the needs of both organizations. When he described the plan to me, I thought it was ill advised.

The start-up would need a year or two to develop the software for its niche market and there was no guarantee it would succeed. Though the nonprofit was struggling, it had a history of being able to raise funds; it would no longer be able to do that if it gave up its tax-exempt status. This could kill the organization, which had a worthy purpose.

Though I was new to the organization, I was comfortable giving my feedback to the executive director, as there was nothing personal about it. The executive director accepted my feedback and put the plan on hold. It was a good thing, too, as the start-up folded in a couple of years and the nonprofit has resurged and is going strong decades later.

On the other hand, when I worked in a large organization I encountered an influential and abusive division leader whom I didn’t know how to stand up to, despite my years of service. She constantly disparaged members of other divisions, which divided and distracted the other divisions from the common purpose. She held a lot of political power in the organization and was personally very intimidating. Though I came from another division, I had her ear and might plausibly have given her the feedback she badly needed. But I couldn’t bring myself to give her such sensitive, critical feedback about her personal behavior.

There are two unhappy outcomes to the story. One is that eventually I lost her ear and became one more victim of her venom toward “the other divisions.” The other is that she continued to damage morale and, after involving the organization in illegal activity, was criminally indicted, dismissed from the organization, and served a prison term. If I had possessed the courage to challenge her, could I have changed this course of events? Only possibly, but I think that “possibly” makes trying worthwhile.

Devoted leaders and followers enter a kind of sacred contract to pursue their common purpose. They both are guardians of that purpose. Part of the courageous follower’s role is to help the leader honor this contract. If we do not challenge a leader about dysfunctional behavior, the contract is slowly shredded before our eyes. The longer we wait, the less is left of the contract.

By not standing up to leaders, not only does the purpose suffer, so does our esteem for the leaders. This makes it harder to effectively give them feedback because it is difficult to do so when a relationship has deteriorated. The world may see a leader’s attractive public persona but, as in marriage, those closest to the leader also see the less attractive patterns. If we do not air our concerns about behavior that threatens the common purpose, we begin to define leaders by these unattractive characteristics rather than by their talent and commitment. It is the responsibility of partners in a relationship to not let this happen.

In my corporate consulting I find it painfully common for staff not to tell their bosses what they need from them to do a good job: mundane things like holding fewer meetings and making them shorter, or giving fewer orders and letting people concentrate on getting the most important tasks done. Corporate leaders would be absolutely amazed at what they don’t hear, because they’d find most of it inoffensive and worth considering. As followers, we need to start challenging our leaders on this level of process and policy when warranted. That will improve the organization’s operation, strengthen the honesty of our relationship with the leader, and prepare us to deal with more difficult personal issues, should they arise.

Leaders with the strong egos and passionate vision needed to scale mountains are prone to self-deception. Some dynamic leaders are so invested in making their mark that they cannot let in information telling them it cannot be made in this way, at this time. A key role of a follower is to minimize this self-deception, to find ways of revealing reality to the leader. To stand up and remove the blinders from a leader’s eyes is a daunting task when the leader is convinced he possesses x-ray vision.

In this chapter I present methods for getting through to leaders so they can hear what we have to say. I will discuss how to create the conditions for providing both effective feedback and timely input that is given the consideration it warrants. The extreme importance of the courageous follower overcoming groupthink impulses is explored, as well as several serious dysfunctional behaviors that followers may encounter and need to deal with.

If we find the courage to stand up to our leaders, they may initially find it as uncomfortable as we do, but eventually they will see that we are also standing alongside them in their corner.