How Can Leaders Win Following?

To put it simply,

1. clear a precondition hypothesis

To put it simply, organizations are made up of superiors and subordinates, and they are also composed of leaders and followers.

An organization can not only have subordinates without superiors, or only leaders without followers.

For the two pairs of concepts of superiors and leaders, subordinates and followers, some scholars think that they can be used as synonyms, such as Kellerman (Barbara Kellerman).

Leaders will not blindly follow their subordinates' pursuits or accept any pursuits of their subordinates, nor will followers choose to follow any leader without principle.

In fact, leaders have their own basic judgments about what kind of follow and how to win, how to follow and how to follow.

2. the pursuit that leaders need to win is an effective and exemplary pursuit.

Why must organizations have followers? Can subordinates solve all problems? The answer is obviously negative, because the most essential feature of followers is "follow" rather than "being led".

In essence, it is of some significance to distinguish superiors from leaders, subordinates and followers.

Though generally understood, leaders are naturally leaders and subordinates are naturally followers, but such understanding fails to grasp the essence of the problem.

For subordinates and followers, subordinates seem to be followers, but subordinates' pursuit follows at least the following: active pursuit and passive pursuit, active pursuit and passive pursuit.

It shows that followers are not uniform, and followers have many categories.

Kellerman (Barbara Kellerman) divides followers into five categories: Isolates, Bystanders, participants (Participants), activist (Activists), and hardcore (Diehards).

The theFollowership Continuum theory also points out that subordinates are the five levels of followers: employees, committed followers, active followers, effective followers and exemplary followers.

Therefore, the followers are different from the general subordinates. Good and good followers are not only subordinates acting according to the leaders' opinions and instructions, but also active, active special subordinates, and are creative subordinates.

No matter from the organizational goals or from the superiors' interests, they can not only have subordinates but no followers. Obviously, the leader's need to follow is not the general pursuit of subordinates. What he needs is following up to the organization, having a positive effect on himself and producing excellent performance.

From this level, how to win a leader's pursuit is just a low level proposition. The high level proposition should be: how can leaders win effective and exemplary pursuit?

3. leaders should fully understand and consider the motivation of subordinates to choose to follow.

As long as he is a man, his activities are bound to have his own motives and purposes.

In terms of subordinates' pursuits, Ke Linsen (David Collinson) listed five motives, that is, following the leader's official position in the society; following in order to achieve some individual purpose; seeking the pursuit of safety asylum from superiors or leaders; because of fear of confusion, the need for order protection by the superior is followed; the pursuit of self-esteem enhanced by recognition of charming and strong leadership.

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As a rational subordinate chooses to follow, the direct motive and purpose is to choose to pursue to oneself, at least without damage.

To win the pursuit, leaders must take the initiative in various ways and means. On the one hand, they must fully understand, consider and respect the interests of their subordinates. On the other hand, they need to let subordinates know that the pursuit of choice can achieve their interest demands.

If a leader considers only his own interests or organizational performance and regards subordinates as a means to achieve his goal, his subordinates are hard to choose to follow, or difficult to choose active, active and creative followers.

4. leaders should enhance their conceptual ability.

Leaders should put forward, explain and disseminate the concept, so that their subordinates will have a good yearning for the future in their minds, and can build a good expectation, believing that they can achieve their needs if they choose to follow.

Padilla (Art Padilla) believes that when followers and leaders share common self-concept and emotional attachment, they are more likely to follow.

If leaders want to win the pursuit, they must follow their own thoughts and actions to make subordinates take the initiative and consciously choose to follow.

Leadership's thinking and behavior directly reflect leaders' conceptual ability and behavior.

Leadership's conceptual ability mainly refers to the ability of leaders to construct and disseminate concepts.

Leaders, through their own conceptual system, win the following of their subordinates, that is, the concept system proposed by leaders, such as enterprise mission, vision, goals and strategies, etc., to a great extent, can help subordinates understand and identify, and provide a convincing and predictable beauty for their subordinates.

As a leader of an organization, the understanding of the mission, vision, goals and tasks of his organization should be comprehensive and accurate, and he can convey his organizational mission, vision, goals and tasks to his subordinates through his own commentary or text, and ensure that they can understand and accept them well.

A good leader is, to a large extent, a strong conceptual leader.

It is not difficult to understand that every subordinating speech delivered by a strong conceptual leader may motivate subordinates to be enthusiastic and confident, and play a role in continuously enhancing their subordinate selection and follow up. While the weaker leader's speech is more likely to make subordinates feel depressed and lethargic, and play a role of constantly weakening the subordinate's choice and follow.

5. leaders should optimize their behavior.

The leader should make the subordinates feel the credibility of the leadership commitment through the actual behavior consistent with the concept, to a large extent, improve the credibility of the expected realization of subordinates, and constantly enhance the subordinate's choice of follow-up.

Leadership behavior refers to the overall behavior of leaders in daily work and even daily life, which can be specifically perceived by subordinates.

Leaders must follow the behavior of their subordinates, that is, leaders can strictly request themselves in behavior, plate concepts into action principles well, and carry out specific behaviors according to their principles of behavior.

Koontz (JamesM.Kouzes) and Posner (BarryZ.Posner) have found that the following reasons come from leaders' honesty, foresight, ability and appeal.

For example, a leader can pform the organizational strategy that he has made into a specific maneuverable tactical plan and supporting measures, so that he can execute the relevant systems that the organization develops and promotes, so that it is more likely to use his exemplary behavior highly consistent with the concept, so as to greatly motivate his subordinates to strengthen their willingness to choose and follow.

On the other hand, when the leader can not carry out the strategy well, or the system can not be well implemented, or when someone fails to execute, but has not been punished accordingly, subordinates can hardly believe that the commitment of the leader can be well implemented in practice, and it is more likely that the subordinates will have a general understanding of "leaders' words and deeds". Therefore, it is more likely to build uncertainty in the mind and anticipate that it is more likely that they will not follow suit in behavior.

In short, if a leader wants to win an effective and exemplary pursuit, he must start from his all-round practice, enhance his conceptual ability and optimize his behavior, and do his best to do well in communication and liaison work between the upper and lower levels. He needs to understand the needs of his subordinates in a comprehensive and in-depth way through various ways. Otherwise, he may be able to deviate from his direction because he does not understand the real needs of his subordinates.

It can be said that whether or not to know and consider the needs of subordinates to the greatest extent is the starting point to win the pursuit.

More attention should be paid to whether leaders can agree on what they say or do, which directly determines the success or failure of winning.