There is a common misconception that you are either a leader or a follower. Untrue. Aristotle once said, “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader”.
Followership refers to a role held by certain individuals in an organization, team, or group. Specifically, it is the capacity of an individual to actively follow a leader. Four key attributes to strong followership:
Leadership – the action of leading a group of people or an organization. Four attributes to strong leadership:
As portrayed above, attributes for followership and leadership are similar. Most leaders in property management start in a much humbler, entry level position and work their way up the corporate ladder. Emerging leaders who work their way up learn about what motivates them, what makes a team work well together and what good or not good leadership is – allowing them to develop empathy and compassion for those they lead.
In property management, many hats are worn throughout any one day. It’s an ever changing, ever evolving world but the fundamentals will always be the same. Making daily decisions as a property manager cannot be done most effectively without first listening and sometimes following the lead of another (boss, subordinate, tenant and/or property owner). In your daily work grind, some decisions don’t come down to good or bad, sometimes it’s a matter of which one is the absolute best choice for an owner/tenant, the “best yes”. Learning to lead and follow enables you to pick the “best yes” when making a decision.
Additionally, learning is a never ending practice. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty” – Henry Ford. To be a great leader, learning should never cease. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading. With changes in laws and rules, great leaders are really the product of a never ending process of skill and character development. They develop through learning about their personalities, relationships and careers. Not to mention the kind of leader they want to become. Although all managers take a custom path to leadership, the journeys of the managers share several elements that can help property management develop great leaders and followership.
To summarize, here are related quotes:
“Listen and consider” – Gene Witzig
“To lead people, walk behind them” – Lao Tzu
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other” – JFK
“Leadership is action, not position” – McGannon
