Dear Frank:

I am a community development director of a midwestern city. My fairly large department is facing many big challenges, including housing, traffic mobility, economic vitality, and livability issues. Even with all the uncertainty around these problems, we are pressured from all sides to deliver results.

Fortunately, I have much experience, knowledge, and expertise developed over my career, including AICP and ICMA-CM credentials and other certifications. As a leader, I am decisive and provide strong direction so we can move forward on a variety of initiatives.

Here is the problem: Whenever I assert with confidence my expertise or knowledge or try to add value to team discussions and decisions, I only get passive compliance. Once I make a decision and set expectations for team members, I only get limited accountability.

We have good professional staff, but I want more active engagement and ownership as we tackle the big issues of the day. What can I do to promote better team commitment?

It seems to me that you perceive leadership as a heroic act. You believe that the best way to lead is to create a bold vision and then inspire followers to follow and execute. This myth of the bold leader is undercutting your leadership. 

The Big Idea

Without active followers, there are no great leaders. In fact, in this uncertain, volatile world of local government, followers determine the leadership outcomes. Formal leaders must recognize that followers choose to follow (or not). It is a choice that followers make on a daily basis. Therefore, a leader needs to ask oneself on a fairly regular basis a foundational question: “Why in this moment should anyone follow me?”

To enhance leadership effectiveness, you must embrace a leadership paradox—great leaders are great followers. To promote great leadership, leaders must follow as well as lead.

What Is Great Followership?

Great followership is the capacity and willingness to actively support a leader and contribute to shared goals through responsible and engaged action. It is not passive obedience. Good followers think, question, challenge, and take initiative. They actively participate in discussions and shape decisions, not blindly comply with directions and instructions.

Good leadership and followership are interdependent and rely on each other. There is much interplay and partnering which result in alignment and shared goals and shared leadership. 

Why Is Good Followership So Important?

When there is only passive involvement in discussions and decisions, most leaders tend to exert more controls, increase monitoring, and focus on “holding people accountable.” This instinct to tighten controls has the opposite effect—it leads to more passivity. (See Kendra Okposo, “Accountability Must Be Chosen, Not Mandated,” hbr.org, April 29, 2026.)

As one indicator of his problem, Gallup reports that only 31% of U.S. employees across all sectors are actively engaged. (See Jim Harter, “U.S. Employee Engagement Declines From 2020 Peak,” gallup.com, Jan 28, 2026.) In part, the lack of active employee engagement leads to failed organizational initiatives. In fact, 70% of change initiatives fail or fall short because of top-down leadership. (See Ronald Riggio, “The Key Role of Followership in Organization Change Initiatives,” Psychology Today, May 9, 2026.)   

When leaders engage in followership, good things happen:

1. Diverse perspectives and creative problem-solving. Leaders who are good followers actively engage people in leveraging their own knowledge and providing their ideas in solving difficult challenges.
2. Better execution. Because followers are engaged in shaping decisions and formulating plans, they tend to actively execute strategies and make adjustments as they learn what works and what does not.
3. Ownership and accountability. Since good followers contribute to decisions, they “own” decisions and thus choose to be accountable. (See Career Compass No. 53 “How Do I Hold People Accountable.”)
4. Enhanced organizational culture. When leaders promote their own followership and that of team members, organizational culture is enhanced. People are more responsible and collaborative. Trust grows.
5. Leadership development. The primary function of leaders is to grow more leaders. By actively engaging followers, they begin to exert more influence and act with more initiative and autonomy. Leaders are thus developing more leaders.

The Three Leadership Traps

To become a better follower, leaders need to avoid the tendency to see themselves as the “main character.” (See Jamil Zaki, “The Best Leaders Embrace the Role of Supportive Character,” hbr.org, May 5, 2026.) Specifically, they must minimize three leadership traps:

1. The Expertise Trap

In team discussions, leaders tend to assert their well-developed and often deep technical expertise. They become the “answer-person” and thus typically shut down discussion and other ideas, especially from those with divergent opinions on how to proceed.

2. The Unshakeable Confidence Paradox

When most paths forward are uncertain and fraught with opposition from various stakeholder groups, leaders who express unwavering confidence may be seen as out of touch. If leaders do not acknowledge the complexity of problems, they may be perceived as detached from reality rather than steady.

3. The Value-Added Trap

As leaders advance in their careers, they are expected to improve on ideas and demonstrate that they are always adding value in every team meeting and discussion. Adding some degree of value in every instance eventually becomes a liability. Instead of saying to an employee who proposes a good idea, “Great, run with it,” you add your idea, which improves the quality of the employee’s idea by 5%. Unfortunately, the employee’s ownership of the idea and their enthusiasm in carrying it out drops by 50%. (See Amil Barnard-Bahn, “When Executive Presence Backfires,” hbr.org, April 1, 2026.)

How Does a Leader Become a Better Follower?

I suggest eleven behaviors that promote a leader’s own followership:

Be fully present

When a leader interacts with a potential follower or team of followers (remember: followers voluntarily choose to follow), the first prerequisite is to be fully present. Presence means clearing your mind, showing up on time, focusing on the people, avoiding distractions (such as smart phones), and giving people your undivided attention. (See Career Compass No. 105 “How Do You Show Up as a Leader?”)

Start by eliciting the meaning behind the issue

Good leaders start with the “why” of the challenge. Followers (as well as leaders) will be more engaged and committed if they perceive meaning and purpose. Of course, there are often different “why’s” for different people. Daniel Pink in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2009) cites purpose as one of the three powerful self-motivators (the other two self-motivators are autonomy and mastery).

Ask provocative questions

To engage the participants in authentic conversation, ask powerful or catalytic questions, such as:

• Why is this issue or challenge important to you? Why is it important to others?
• What part of this potential project excites you?
• What is unclear or uncertain? How do we seek a bit more clarity?
• What do we know?
• What don’t we know? How do we find out?
• What voices are not being heard? How do we include them?
• What does “success” look like?
• What are two or three steps forward?
• As we proceed, what do we need to learn?
• As you take action, how can I support you?

Talk less, listen more

To create dialogue, leaders must talk less and listen more. Great conversationalists listen 50 percent more time than they talk. (Career Compass No. 61 “Leadership is the Art of Conversation.”) 

Demonstrate curiosity and humility

To generate good information, ideas and perspectives, don’t immediately jump into the conversation with your ideas. Show your curiosity with questions including “Can you tell me more?” or “What am I missing?”

If you show humility, you enhance your ability to elicit diverse perspectives. Humility is defined as having a modest view of yourself, including your expertise, knowledge and importance. In his book The Book of Beautiful Questions (2019), Warren Berger suggests that we ask ourselves “Am I a soldier defending my territory, or am I scout exploring new lands?”

Acknowledge what you hear

Active listeners acknowledge and verify what they hear, even if they do not agree. To activate good followership, leaders need to paraphrase and restate what others are saying so that people feel heard.

Incorporate people’s ideas into the solution

The more that followers see their ideas become part of the solution the more engagement and ownership they have.

As a younger leader, I often jumped into a team meeting with my great ideas. Even when team members seemed to agree with my ideas and direction, they became passively involved in execution and in fact did not truly follow.

To promote one’s own followership, a good leader helps weave together diverse views, including one’s own ideas. They ensure that people get their fingerprints on the eventual solution. The resulting solution often tends to be more robust, even more elegant. People own the proposed way forward and will hold themselves accountable. “Authorship is ownership.” (See Kendra Okposo, “Accountability Must Be Chosen, Not Mandated,” hbr.org, April 29, 2026.)

Promote autonomy whenever possible

Autonomy is a key self-motivator. No one wants to be told how to do something. Within certain guide rails, leaders can promote their own followership by letting people figure it out.

Focus on progress

Because it takes time to do research, formulate recommendations, get approvals, and execute any action plans, leaders need to shorten review cycles and help the team make adjustments. By focusing on progress in achieving milestones along the way, the team can maintain momentum. (See Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle, 2011.)

Promote learning

All good followers as well as leaders want to learn and get better at what they do. As Daniel Pink notes in Drive, “mastery” is a powerful self-motivator.

In the uncertain environment of local government, it's hard to do long-term planning. For any given adaptive challenge, all you can do is identify a path forward, take a few steps, see what works and what doesn’t, pivot, fix things up as you go, and learn as you go. You are learning your way to success. (See Career Compass No. 125, “Navigating Through the Fog.”)

Learning and stretching are, of course, the keys to the leadership development of your followers. They are also the “social glue” that helps you retain your talent. Talented professionals tend to stay with you as long as they are learning and growing.

Celebrate along the way

To promote good followership in your team and for yourself, leaders should intentionally celebrate the progress and well-intentioned mistakes that all produce learning and achievement. Recognition can entail small but impactful activities such as coffee and bagels, an ice cream social, or shout-outs acknowledging contributions at team meetings. Recognition and appreciation efforts promote engagement.

All these behaviors promote the leader as follower. By doing so, the leader is creating more engagement, ownership, accountability, and growth. 

The Post-Heroic Leader

Leadership must not be seen as heroic. The leader is servant to one’s followers who help create great leadership.

To become more of a supportive character, the leader must show up fully present, ask questions, elicit and weave together diverse ideas, facilitate problem-solving, provide any support, and get out of the way.

By becoming a better follower, the leader becomes a better leader.

Sponsored by the ICMA Coaching Program, ICMA Career Compass is a monthly column from ICMA focused on career issues for local government professional staff. Dr. Frank Benest is ICMA's liaison for Next Generation Initiatives and resides in Palo Alto, California. Read past columns of Career Compass in the archive. 

If you have a career question you would like addressed in a future issue, email coaching@icma.org or contact Frank directly at frank@frankbenest.com. 

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