How to be a Good Follower

Mentor Speak

This series of short write ups provide pearls of wisdom from Global Leaders and Mentors who are associated with us. They bring in a practitioner’s perspective and serves as an effective combination of advice that has authenticity, experience and most importantly – relevance.

After thousands of views of my article on “How to Be a Good Leader” I was surprised when a few people asked me, how to be a good employee? Very few people ask that question. Everyone wants to be a Leader. Seldom do they realize that true leaders are born on the stepping stones of “followership”. Like the seven wonders of the world, I have arrived at these 7 wonderful traits, great followers demonstrate.

Do Small Things with Love

We all know how boring things get at our workplace. That’s when frustration sets in and people are stuck with a syndrome, I call the push-pull of two thoughts - “I like my job but hate my work” or “I hate my job but like my work”. Obviously, none of them are desirable, especially when such ideas brew in an employee’s head. So how do you make mundane activities meaningful? It’s just ‘Love’. When you do mundane things with Love, with concentration, you will find immense joy. Just try to sharpen your pencil with love and attention like a mother giving a bath to her baby. Attention with a loving attitude creates a phenomenal stream of energy. It helps you immensely; it creates amazing output and you’ll feel happy at the end of it. Outstanding employees demonstrate that. They never get bored or complain, because they love what they do, even if it is an ordinary task.

Accept your Boss and Colleagues the way they are

Many employees, especially the mid-managers tell me that they are inherently good but have a lousy boss and vindictive colleagues. I always ask them in return, “do you have work to do?” I haven’t heard a “no” yet. So why bother about something that you can never change, unless you change your job. Probably you haven’t done that because either you haven’t got a new job or you feel very secure with the brand of your current company.  Therefore, the only choice for being happy is to start pouring your attention to work and accepting people the way they are. Change your mental lens when you see your boss or your so-called vindictive colleagues again with a fresh set of eyes. See them as an expression of the world around you. A rainy day is a gloomy day for some and a romantic day for another. Is it fair to blame the rain or the day? If your workplace is a theatre and you are an actor, play out as a team member irrespective of the role you’ve got. Even a small part played will never go unnoticed. Oscars are given to supporting actors too and it’s not always a trophy for the heroes or the protagonists.

Welcome challenges

Challenges mean more work, more complexities, more hurdles, and indeed more opportunities. They are always welcome, primarily for two reasons. One, it trains you to do something you’ve never done before. Secondly, it tests your resilience, attitude, and tenacity. Great employees always want more on their plate. They do so because they have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and skills. Challenges also help people to prioritize, as they do not allow time for gossip or unproductive hours. It will be a great exercise if you write on a piece of paper, how much work you did on a given day and how much time you’ve spent on “not doing work”. You will be surprised when you see your own work logbook. 

Challenges also provide opportunities for employees to prove their mettle. There are generally two classes of people. One that confirms the routine and status quo. Others love to take on additional responsibilities, workload. In short, they are willing to do that little extra from the ordinary and invariably become extra-ordinary. 

The fun is in the journey

The greatest learning of being a good employee comes from mountaineers. They not only enjoy the unprecedented nature and life-threatening challenges, they also love their climb, from base camp to higher camps. The time at the summit may be counted only in minutes. However, the entire mountain trip takes years of preparation. Like those mountaineers, think of yourself as one of those team members. Your daily work may be just a mundane task but start doing it with a sense of fun. When you spend half of your waking hours in the office, start enjoying it. The sweeper in Disney world thinks of himself as an actor in the park trying to entertain children, though he is just clearing spilled popcorns. There is a lot of learning from that. Work-life is never a moment. It is a long marathon of life. We should start enjoying that ride.

Bring your good self to office

Most of the time, people just show up in the office. That’s how we are wired, especially when we do repetitive things. Repeat actions become habit.  Habitually we just bring ourselves to office, sometimes with half our energy, a quarter of our passion and maybe with negligible positive mood. As psychological creatures, we always have a choice to exercise our presence in a manner that will be uplifting. Great employees walk into the office; the way an actor appears on a show. It may be her 100th show, but she pours the same heart and soul, what she did for her first performance. When you walk through the door of your workplace, do it with a sense of pride, joy and lots of positivity. Sometimes people complain about their environment, people culture or office politics. While all these, that impacts our mind, our motivation are detrimental, great employees come with a very different mental model and attitude. Many of you may know the story of 3 workers in a granite quarry, whose only job was to cut stones and get paid. When asked what they do; the 1st one said “ I cut stones because I get paid”, the 2nd one said “ I cut stones because I want to be a part of building this township” and the 3rd one said, “ I don’t know which stone will be used for the upcoming chapel, but I want my work, to stand out, a hundred years later, in front of people gathering to pray for peace and happiness”. Which one of these ‘stone-cutters’ do you want to be? Great employees are the ones like the second or the third. 

Treat Work as Worship

Somehow it has got into our head that work is transactional. There is a sort of give and take across multiple levels; such as employee-employer, pay-performance, policy-passion. While they are common templates that most organizations use to manage and motivate people, there is a completely new dimension of looking at work, as an act of worship. Bringing this spiritual sense in a secular activity brings forth a dramatic shift in your work, especially at your workplace. Your contribution lives beyond your departure from your workplace. Lots of cultures have epitomized work as a form of worship. It may be a very age-old concept and I have found that people who have combined work and worship together have delivered remarkable outcomes. They are the rarest of the rare. They should be our inspiration. Great institutions thrive on those employees more than their leaders. This is where employees with a “work-ship” attitude can transcend the chasm of becoming a leader. They go beyond themselves, even though they were just ordinary workers. I have always bowed down to them. 

Be unselfish

This is a difficult trait to develop. We have heard of this common phrase called “fruits of labor”. I have seen employees who never bother about what they get in return. They are just unselfish and do things because they just want to help others from the core of their heart. These people harmonize their heads, heart, and hands for making a difference for their customers and colleagues. They just don’t expect any gain from their actions. In the early days of my career, when emails were not invented, I came across a person who just delivered paper mails and documents across tables in our office. The manner in which he kept those papers were remarkable. His passionate and attentive behaviour prompted me to ask him why he performed such mundane tasks with so much love. He replied, “I don’t know what documents they are, but I know many of them will change lives, bring cheer to the company. How can I afford not to keep it on the table, in a proper way so that they are not lost”? I will never forget this ordinary Peon because he inspired me more than many Presidents I have seen in my life.

To summarize-

I have always believed that there is an ASK for every role in a company. It is a combination of Attitude, Skills, and Knowledge. While one can be trained on Skills and Knowledge, it is difficult to develop an Attitude. It is something that has to be developed by oneself over a long period of time. Great employees display varying degrees of these seven pearls of attitude. The day one acquires most of them, ‘Followership’ will stand taller than ‘Leadership’. Such apparently unsung heroes will always live longer in the hearts and minds of people in an institution.