The Importance of Good Followership in Nonprofit Leadership

Followership gets a bad rap. That is a problem, because everyone involved in fundraising and nonprofit leadership ought to have the opportunity — even the responsibility — to act as both decisive leader and conscientious follower.

These are not opposing roles. They are two sides of the same coin.

What Barbara Kellerman Gets Right About Followers

Harvard leadership professor Barbara Kellerman has done more than most to rehabilitate the idea of followership. Her work helped me develop my own thinking about the dynamic between leaders and followers — and why that dynamic matters so much in our sector.

Kellerman defines followers in two ways. The first is conventional: followers are subordinates with less power, authority, and influence than those above them. The low people on the totem pole.

But she breaks with that view in an important way. Followers, she argues, are defined not only by their position in a hierarchy but by their behavior. Whether they push back or go along, followers have the power to exert real influence on an organization. They shape what leaders can achieve — and what leaders are willing to attempt.

Malala and the Power of the Follower

The most striking illustration of this principle is not from a boardroom. It is from a fourteen-year-old girl in Pakistan.

In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was, by every conventional measure, powerless. A teenager in a country where the Taliban had banned girls from attending school. No title. No institution behind her. No formal authority of any kind.

And yet her fight for educational rights became an international cause, precisely because she understood something that most adults in positions of power do not: that a follower who acts with conviction can move the world. She did not wait for permission. She spoke, wrote, and refused to be silent — and in doing so, she changed the conversation globally.

That is followership at its most powerful. It does not look like compliance. It looks like courage.

What Good Followers Actually Do

In the nonprofit world, the best followers are not passive. They monitor outcomes. They question assumptions. They bring detailed proposals to the table. They keep colleagues honest — including supervisors. They initiate recommendations. They support the people around them and push back when something is wrong.

I have seen confident nonprofit leaders actively encourage their staff to exercise the full weight of the organization's authority. That kind of leadership has a useful side effect: it distributes the burden and makes the person at the top feel less isolated. Good leadership from above fosters more leadership below. The two reinforce each other.

When I ran my own firm, good followership was something we looked for in every hire. We wanted people willing to speak out for the organization and the clients we served — even when, especially when, that meant disagreeing with the direction we were heading. A good follower, it turns out, is often a future leader.

Followership as a Leadership Problem

Here is the harder truth: a lack of good followership is usually a symptom of poor leadership.

When people go quiet, when staff stop questioning, when no one pushes back — that is not a sign of a well-run organization. It is a sign that the leader at the top has not created the conditions for honest exchange.

Good followership requires a framework. It is proactive and participatory. It lives inside a culture of genuine interchange between leader and follower — less a chain of command than a well-choreographed conversation. Every CEO both leads and follows the board. The same dynamic runs all the way down the organizational chart. The hierarchy is real, but so is the influence that flows back up through it.

Organizations that flourish — not just survive, but genuinely flourish — tend to be led by people who listen. Who take their followers seriously. Who understand that the ideas most worth having rarely arrive from the top.

 The Takeaway for Fundraisers

If you work in fundraising, you move between roles constantly. You follow your executive director's lead. You lead your board through a campaign. You follow your donors' priorities. You lead your volunteers toward a common goal.

None of that works well if you treat followership as a lesser state — something to escape as quickly as possible on the way to leadership. The people who do this work best have learned to inhabit both roles with equal care.

Follow well. It is its own form of leadership.

What has your experience been with followership in the nonprofit sector? Share your thoughts in the comments section of the website.