I have spent a great deal of my life in pursuit of what makes a leader a great leader. In fact, I’ve gained work experience, read books and earned scholarly degrees in pursuit of the formula for a great leader. We often hear dialogues ad infinitum over the attributes of a great leader. Volumes have been written, all in hopes of nailing the holy grail of leadership thought.

Then I had this thought: What if . . . what if we are looking at the wrong end of the horse? What if the pathway to great leadership is a great follower? Think about it this way. We spend an enormous amount of energy teaching, mentoring and training individuals to be great leaders but we rarely hear organizations talking about creating great followers. When was the last time you actually taught someone to be a follower? I don’t mean showing someone how to blindly follow every order. No, what I am talking about is mentoring your followers to be great leaders. Huh? What? That’s right, to have great leaders, you have to teach them how to be great followers.

Dr. John Pitron had it right that “Followership is Leadership.” To be a great leader you must first be a great follower. And, once you have achieved leadership you never stop being a follower. Why is it that we don’t teach followership in business school?

I recently had an experience in which I was working with a team as the leader. I was challenged by an individual who was attempting to assert themselves as the leader without first understanding the role of a follower. What I learned is that it is hard to lead someone who cannot follow. When someone won’t follow, they do not create the trust needed to lead. The situation didn’t go well at all.

The question I have to ask is this: Is it the fault of the follower that no one taught them to follow? Is it the fault of the leader for not teaching them what it means to follow? Is it the fault of the follower in not trying to learn how to lead? I would say it is probably a little bit of all the above. In fact, we fail our followers when we don’t teach them what it means to be followers. In the end, if we are not teaching them to be leaders that follow we can’t expect them to be followers that lead.

I know, I know . . . this is a lot to chew on. Bottom line, we have to do a better job of teaching our followers. We must mentor them in what great followership looks like and in doing so, we must teach them what great leadership looks like. Leadership many times looks like followership.