Why Learning How to Follow Makes You a Better Leader

I sit on trade association committee meetings with other CEOs and have noticed that sometimes it’s hard to follow the leader when the room is full of them. Everyone is so used to being in charge that collaboration suffers, especially when a consensus is needed within the given time period to allow the committee to move forward with some decisions. In the end, we risk little actually getting accomplished.

Sitting around those tables got me reflecting on how being a leader doesn’t mean you are always the leader. Situations have their own structure where someone else might be the chair, the owner, the one responsible. And if a leader cannot read that — and they walk in assuming their usual role — it creates a problem.

Please don’t equate that with arrogance. The real issue here is identity confusion, where the need to be seen as a leader overrides the need to be useful, because it is expected. As leaders, half the time, we may not even notice we are stepping up when we should be stepping back.

Here is what I have learned about reading the room for who actually owns the situation and what to do instead of defaulting to leadership mode.

Related: To Be a Leader, You Must Know When to Follow

Reading the room

Too often, leadership is misidentified as control, which creates unrealistic expectations. There’s pressure to act quickly and always be right. However, if leaders don’t let go of control in situations that they should, we risk stunting people’s growth and creating a bottleneck in our own organizations. Let me give you an example.

Say you’re a CEO visiting one of your manufacturing sites and an emergency hits. You are technically the most senior person there, but the GM runs this site, and it’s her crisis. What do you do? Even if she’s struggling, you don’t grab the wheel. You may act as a good advisor of hers to support, but you should definitely give her room to own the decision-making because that’s how she grows.

That sort of restraint is the job now. Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends survey found that 34% of leaders are “not at all ready” to lead in a world where solutions are cocreated. The report defines cocreation as leaders sharing problem-solving with their teams. That means ceding control of the answers, too.

However, as Deloitte notes, leaders may take this as a challenge to their authority and even personal failure under the old hierarchical model. The definition of good leadership has shifted, and many of us are still catching up.

Related: 5 Reasons Why Good Leaders Must Be Great Followers

3 questions I ask myself

In times of uncertainty, trying to command outcomes too soon can limit the collective intelligence already forming around you. Before I step into any situation where I’m not in charge, I ask myself three questions that will help me know what this moment needs from me.

Each sounds simple, but they require awareness that doesn’t come naturally to people used to running things. I’ve watched CEOs talk past each other for an hour without recognizing that what they consider important may be completely out of scope. These three questions force a reset:

1. Who has the leading role in owning the situation here?

This might be the sales director in a client meeting, someone two levels below you in a cross-functional project or simply the chair at a board meeting. Misreading who owns the room means you will focus on the wrong priorities.

2. What are we trying to accomplish?

If you don’t consciously bracket your usual concerns, they can leak into every contribution you make, and you will end up leading when you should be following.

3. How do I support?

This is where leadership experience actually becomes useful. You have probably seen when things are going off track many times, but the discipline is intervening without taking over, contributing without hijacking the topic and supporting the person in the leading role without creating possibilities to diverge. A few examples:

• Asking a question that surfaces what the group is missing, instead of providing the answer yourself.

• Taking insights from unexpected sources seriously, such as a junior team member.

• Backing the designated leader’s call publicly, even if you would have done it differently.

• Pulling them aside afterward with perspective, rather than correcting them in front of the room.

Contrary to the traditional leadership model, enabling others in this manner is a must-have skill in modern leadership.

Leading as a follower

The hardest scenario is when the designated leader is visibly struggling when you have the expertise to fix it. If you step right in, you have just taught everyone that when things get hard, they don’t have your trust to lead.

The alternative is to offer support in a way that keeps the spotlight on them. In that manufacturing-site scenario, it might require asking the GM a question that helps her see what she’s missing or reinforcing a decision so the team gets behind it. Wherever possible, give people room to recover from a misstep.

These moments are the perfect training ground for emerging leaders as long as you can keep the risk profile in check. How else are they going to develop leadership muscle if their superior steps in the moment things get tough? Ultimately, leading as a follower builds organizational resilience.

Related: Reading The Room: Building An Awareness Of Others In Order To Strengthen Relationships (And Elevate Your Influence)

Leadership for a “boundaryless world”

Back at those trade association meetings, the problem isn’t ego or arrogance. It’s that everyone walks in with their own criteria for what matters, but not everyone stops to align — not to mention that not everyone keeps in mind all the time the purpose of the discussion outlined in the agenda for the alignment. Building alignment may sometimes fall to you, but it often means following the designated leader.

The Deloitte report describes a “boundaryless world” where leadership is no longer contingent on position, hierarchy or number of direct reports. Knowing when to lead and when to follow is about more than moving through an impasse or crisis. It sets the stage for greater agility at a time of near constant disruption.

I sit on trade association committee meetings with other CEOs and have noticed that sometimes it’s hard to follow the leader when the room is full of them. Everyone is so used to being in charge that collaboration suffers, especially when a consensus is needed within the given time period to allow the committee to move forward with some decisions. In the end, we risk little actually getting accomplished.

Sitting around those tables got me reflecting on how being a leader doesn’t mean you are always the leader. Situations have their own structure where someone else might be the chair, the owner, the one responsible. And if a leader cannot read that — and they walk in assuming their usual role — it creates a problem.