Followership and Culture

I've continued to think...to muse... about the issue of followership since my post a few days back and my thinking is now a bit more refined...

...concerning my ability to create followership on my job.

I do think that, more than anyone on the leadership team, I create followership.

However, having thought about it, I don't think I can claim as much for myself as I described in the previous post.

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I am, truly, startled, and humbled, by the degree to which followership takes place when I'm the manager in charge at the store but, upon further reflection, I now praise myself for that reality less enthusiastically than I have.

What we have in my department of the store is a work culture that generates followership.

By that I mean this: The way all the pieces of what we do fit together empowers leaders to lead well and the people under their authority to contribute to the team in a positive way and, therefore, to produce followership.

Now, to my credit, I do buy into the culture. I believe in it and, definitely, live it to the best of my ability. In fact, I'm enthusiastic about it to the point that I suspect that I enhance the power of the culture.

But, my ability to generate followership, it seems to me, is less connected to me personally than I implied in my previous post. It is a matter of something that exists beyond me. It's a function of the work culture.

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I am, of course, both fascinated and chagrined by the fact that, in my part of the institutional church, followership is virtually nonexistent.

And, I think, I'm getting in touch with a part of that story.

The culture in which the institutional church, as I know it, exists, is dysfunctional.

My work culture generates followership. The culture around which the church operates actually seems to discourage followership.

Again, as I often say, the people who hold institutional authority in my part of the organized church are good, nice and sincere people yet they're profoundly ineffective in getting people to follow them.

Participating in a functional work culture as I do, it seems that our church's leaders' failures are fruit of disobedience in the church culture.

The problem in the church is not the weakness of its leaders as much as it is the culture, the system.

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Here's the thing, though. The work culture at the store hasn't been functional all of my years on the job.

The newest manager brought changes to the work culture through his own approach to leadership and by gently...yet forcefully...confronting old, bad ways...and by living out a new way.

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That's an option for leaders of the institutional church.

The good, nice and sincere people who lead my church have chosen an easy way, that of accepting and carrying on dysfunctional values. The result is that virtually no one follows them, no matter how much we may like them as individuals.

As much as I have affection for the holders of institutional authority in my church:

I, personally, don't practice followership as far as they are concerned...

...and, I don't intend to start practicing followership.

On the other hand, I'm excited to practice followership on my job.

Still, as much as I love my church and like its holders of institutional authority, I refuse to do followership of the church's leadership.

And, obviously, I'm not alone.

The story of my church is that its leaders dart to and fro, following one fad after another and the rest of the body does the, "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" thing.

No one follows.

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The holders of institutional authority in my church had the same option open to them that the new manager at the store had when he assumed the position:

When the regime changed, the current holders of institutional authority in the church could have confronted the old, failed, unblessed ways.

They didn't.

Curiously, on the job, I don't think anyone else has realized that the new guy set out to, well, "uproot and tear, to destroy and overthrow" the old ways.

He and I talk privately about his leadership philosophy and, from those chats, I've figured out what he's doing...what he's done.

The holders of institutional authority in my church could have done the same thing when the regime changed. They could have set out to change the culture. They didn't grasp that opportunity.

Is it too late for them?

Probably.

They are now known as advocates of the old, unblessed ways.

Sad.

An opportunity lost.

We must repent.