Followership!

Two men are walking down a city sidewalk on the way to make a sales call. One is the leader and the other his subordinate. As they walk, they spot a vintage Porsche 911 parked on the street, gleaming in the sun.

The leader says to the subordinate, “You see that beautiful car? Well, someday, if you work really hard, and you do all of the right things,” at which point he pauses briefly. The subordinate thinks he knows where this is going and is instantly picturing his future successful self in that sweet ride.

“You do all that hard work,” the leader continues, “and someday, I will be able to afford that car.”

It is a funny story, albeit darkly funny, which was told to me by my boss at the time (he had been the subordinate when the story occurred).

Part of the humor comes from the naked candor about the reality of work. It is a kind of honesty that is often in short supply in the workplace, where we wax on about culture, teams, and our work family.

And then go home and complain to our real family about our jobs.

There is, though, more to the Porsche story than dark corporate humor. Instead, it is a bit of Rorschach test. Many hear that story and feel some level of frustration, mild disgust, anger, etc. Others hear it and see only opportunity.

I am in the latter camp. In fact, I believe that buried in that anecdote is the most potent and overlooked lesson about career advancement and success you can learn, a lesson that I credit for years of promotions and raises.

But it took someone revealing the lesson to me in a way that made sense and I could work with, which I in turn am sharing in this post—one I am writing with my kids in mind, as they just this past month both started earning their own money the first time, both working initially as solopreneurs (babysitting and shoveling), which means it is only a matter of time before they have their first bosses.

Too many cooks

Before getting to the potentially life altering career intel, we need to quickly talk about the type of career advice that is far more prominent in our lives. Without this detour, the formidable power of the lesson may be lost.

The messages that dominate, not surprisingly, are the ones that dominate, focus on our roles as the leader. How can we all be better leaders? What are the habits of great leaders? What does the neuroscience say about being a more effective leader?

Books answering these questions all compete for our attention at airport bookstores and articles about leadership best practices and recent research fill our LinkedIn feeds.

Authors like Adam Grant and Daniel Pink are paid high five-figure, possibly six-figure, speaking fees to show up to our corporate meetings to reveal the secrets of how we can all be more effective leaders.

There is of course a problem here. While I am no leadership savant (I hear past members of teams I have led enthusiastically seconding this point), I understand the basic concept of leading well enough to spot the problem. It has to do with an imbalance.

The issue reminds me of those psych studies you see reporting that 90 percent of people think they are in the top 10 percent of the population in terms of attractiveness. And there are similar studies detailing a similar mathematical impossibility when it comes to how we assess our intelligence relative to the population at large.

Something similar fuels all of the mania around learning the secrets to great leadership. Which is unfortunate and not just because there isn’t space for us all to be leaders.

It is because those books often miss the point of how the world works, really works, and where the greatest opportunity for career success lies.

So, here it is. Here is the lesson that changed my work life and could change yours, or someone you know and love, like your kids as they go off into the working world: success in work is a matter of making your boss look good.

The Tao of helping your boss thrive

I know. It is not a sexy aspirational career message. Which is why you will not see Messieurs Grant and Pink hammering home such a theme at the next all-company meeting.

And we shouldn’t be surprised that business best-seller lists, inspired by this post, don’t suddenly fill up with titles like, Good to Great Following, and Obsequious Now!, and Zen of the Art of Being a Doormat.

It just doesn’t sit well with our occasionally fragile inner selves. But that is too bad, because understanding the power of being a good number two, of being great at helping your boss get that Porsche, is in many ways where the money lies.

I first learned this lesson when a career shift took me from a rollicking life as a writer-for-hire living in Los Angeles to that of a non-rollicking writer joining the staid ranks of a large US bank located in the Midwest.

Early in my tenure, I attended a lunch-and-learn that was part of a series for new hires. The talks featured executives at the bank giving talks on their careers and advice on advancement.

During one of the sessions, an executive was sharing his reflections and lessons when he paused, seemed to think about whether to go off script or not, and said, “But if I am going to be really honest…” And then he uttered those, for me, fateful words about the real path to success.

I’ve often wondered how many of the other employees present for that talk took that message to heart as much as I did. For me, it was a true light bulb moment. I suddenly saw how the whole system works at that 50k foot level and how I should focus my efforts going forward.

As is hopefully obvious, there is more to boss-first insight than first appears. It is not just an exercise in giving all credit to our bosses, possibly going so far as to spread rumors around the office about how virtuous our bosses are even outside of work.

(Though, if you want to go this route, I recommend: “Did you hear that [insert boss name] gave CPR to some homeless guy on the sidewalk yesterday? [insert boss name] brought him back to life! Amazing, but don’t mention it. [insert boss name] doesn’t want to make a fuss.)

Instead, it is a succinct guiding principle that helps drive our work so that we are not merely plodding along, achieving predictable results, but really are dong the work that is more likely to lead to our boss’s boss taking note. This means creatively going beyond expectations, eliminating wasted work, innovating in attention-grabbing ways, and over all getting big wins.

And what do you do if this succeeds? If your efforts in some way help your boss get ahead at work, if everyone is trumpeting your boss’s leadership skills in part based on your boss-first industry, is this a problem? Is it unfair? Not in the slightest. Bring on the kudos and at-a-boys. Bring on the boss promotion and executive perks. Bring on that shiny new leader Porsche.

Because here is the thing—thriving leaders have a habit of reciprocating. It is almost like magic. It is almost like they have been following the same leader-first symbiotic strategy in their own work and know the drill. They have an uncanny knack for bestowing the lion’s share of promotions and bonuses on members of the team who happen to have been working according to these principles.

But, but, but…

Glass-half-full aficionados who have read this far may experience intense rebuttal thinking at this point: But what if your boss is a jerk!? What if they take credit for your hard work and then ignore you?

There is of course that possibility. Those bosses are out there. I have personally had the displeasure of reporting to a few.

But when that issue does arise, that is the time to move on, because the manager who does not recognize your outsize effort to helping them succeed never had your back in the first place, whether you put in the extra effort or not.

The good news is that employees who are powered by this help-your-boss-succeed mindset, and who back it up with performance, do not have a hard time getting new jobs. Former bosses are often even tying to hire them back. Or if not that, then they are bestowing glowing references on the employee who is on a job search.

Unfortunately, we can’t really know how our leaders will respond to the boss-first mindset and our make-boss-shine performance until we commit to it and do the work. Help make good things happen for you leader and then they have opportunity to show you whether they know how to really lead.

Those reading this who are leaders know firsthand that, as seemingly obvious as this work-life lesson is, the attitude and approach I am describing is often not the dominant one on your teams. Instead, leaders likely encounter a surprising number of employees who look to the boss as some mixture of referee, therapist, work-parent, as well as, one they go home, the person to complain to friends and family about.

Which is okay and will forever be an employee prerogative. There are a myriad of business books to help leaders acquire the skills to try help these employees, traditional books that teach mangers to focus on eliminating obstacles that impede employee success and cultivating an attitude of servant leadership.

Meanwhile, though, the employees who have taken that help-your-boss-shine lesson to heart will not fall for the trap of wanting their boss to routinely save the day. Instead, those employees are focusing on working in such a way that their leaders actually worry at times, possibly when trying to go to fall asleep, what would I do if they were to leave?! That may be the ultimate goal.

Memo to my kids

I am forever indebted to a number of the leaders I have worked for. They were incredibly smart, talented, and had read the better leadership books. In the instances when I needed them to pull the leader card and weigh in on my behalf, they were there. They also were amazing at helping to get me into roles where I could thrive and then to give me the space and autonomy to do so.

I really am convinced that the fateful lunch-and-learn lesson helped me work in a way that turbocharged my corporate career. It helped me get creative and aim higher. There is definitely something calculating and mercenary about the mindset, but my work was also driven by gratitude for the degree to which those strong leaders helped me succeed. And so the virtuous cycle turns.

(I am leaving out another level from this essay in order to keep the message focused and the length manageable, but I want to point out that I was at times leading my own teams, which included a number of talented individuals who had the challenging task of making me shine and who I hopefully in turn helped facilitate their advancement and growth. Xoxo.)

One of the most touching moments in my corporate career came when a leader I was reporting to suggested during a 1/1 that we should start thinking about the path to me being his eventual successor, including what skills I should start honing, in the event that he were to move on (in which case I would be reporting to the CEO).

I didn’t cry, but my eyes undoubtedly went a bit watery. That was honestly one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. At the same time, I was deeply skeptical, having a hard time imagining myself mastering all that my boss excelled at. But it was very nice to hear those words. (The company, by the way, imploded before this could become a reality.)

I share this Hallmark work moment because I think it is such an ideal example of where the approach I am describing can lead: You advance in work in part by helping each successive manager thrive until a day you might rise to a point when your leader is suggesting that it is your turn to take lead, by which point you may have climbed higher than you would have otherwise thought possible.

Follower power, man.

In many ways, this sort of mutually-beneficial dynamic is how much of the world has always worked, but I fear that no matter what I write, no matter how I make the case for such a strategy, far too many readers will not believe these words, or they just won’t be able to stomach an approach that feels so vulnerable. Better to read another book on leadership and wait for their shot.

At a minimum, I am going to make sure my kids get the message. We will be having a good talk, possibly reviewing these words, when in a year or so the first of them is ready to move on from entrepreneurship and have a boss. I want them to understand how the game works from that very first burger they flip, and then see how far this real world life lesson takes them. 

Possibly all the way to that shiny Porsche, if, that is, cars (and wealth) end up being their thing. You never know.