The Importance of Active Followership

Recently I was listening to an interview with astronaut Reid Wiseman who said something that I’ve long held as a personal philosophy of sorts, but was never able to articulate so well: He told the interviewer about the importance of active following. Think of active following as the counterpart to situational leadership: Where situational leadership is the idea that leadership can change moment to moment based on competence and context, active followership is the other side of this formula that makes everything click into place. From one moment to the next, the current leader steps back when tapped by one of the current followers and that person takes over. The mindset switch in that moment, from leading to following, but always with an attention to when a switch back or a switch to a third person might be necessary, that’s active following. And I think we see way too little of that in most professional contexts. Anyway, just putting this out there.

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