Jakartass, your comment is very comprehensive, yet you can presented it briefly. I am impressed!

I would like to point out one of the points that influences followers to be the good ones, education. When I started my career at a conglomerate’s corporation in Indonesia, most of my coworkers who were overseas graduated (western education) had one common characteristic, i.e. outspoken. They would share what they knew, what they thought and they were not afraid to be told that they were wrong. This is one of the characteristics that makes people to be the good followers.

There are two articles, that I wrote, regarding education. I think they are worth to discuss, first is in relation to how a teacher should treat her/his students, second is regarding show and tell program in the United States education system. It seems, Indonesia education system does not emphasize strong enough on these subjects.

There may be the genuine fear of being ‘wrong’, because of incompetence or a sense of inadequacy for the job. This could well be due to economic factors – underemployment is a major consideration in these impoverished times – but is more likely a genuine lack of skills due to the paucity of an education system which does not encourage creativity or personal growth, but only the ability to memorise the ‘right’ answers in examinations.

There is, I believe, another, greater fear – that of being seen to be ‘wrong’, the concept of losing face. Surely it’s the inner person which is of greater import. Is it worth having a nice ‘face’, if you’re ugly inside?

As you say, Beni, there are some impressive comments here. I particularly agree with Rusdy’s comment that the value that no one holds anymore is of having a common goal, a shared vision.

When I say something like that on my site, folk start to comment that I must be some kind of communist, as if the ‘gimme, gimme, me, me’ attitude is all-important. There appears to be a genuine fear of working for the common good, of sharing and caring.

Surely the best leaders are those who allow each individual in a team to perform to his or her potential. The common good demands that we do what we can rather than what we can be seen to be doing. And this can only be achieved by everyone being a good listener and the acceptance of alternative, even dissenting, views.

However, leader is also an individual who can make mistakes just like everybody else. Let’s say Soekarno and Soeharto. These two leaders for certain period were know as extraordinary leaders. On the other side they also made mistakes, but at that moment, before things went really bad, just a few of the followers who warned them. The majority of them were kept quite or even supported Soekarno’s and Soeharto’s incorrect actions. This situation happenned maily because of paternalistic culture that becomes one of the conformist and passive followers’ attributes.

I think, if there were enough exemplary followers at that time, Soekarno and Soeharto would have made better leaders.

Bleu and Ria pointed out very critical issues, “When to be a good follower.” I will say Al Gore is one of the perfect example to decide when to stop and just to be a follower, instead keeping fighting to be the United States President. He showed his good followership skills in the presidential election, actually Gore still had a chance to win and became the president. For very good reason, he stopped challenging Bush and the allegedly corrupt election system in Florida. His reason was to keep the integration of the nation.

The other example you can see how Nelson Mandela declined to join the second election in South Africa and chose to become the follower.

Rusdy remind us about something that is very basic in leadership, a leader must serve their followers, act as a servant. Leader must be able to aggregate, transform, articulate their followers’ needs. On the other side the followers need to understand and trust their leader based on their best judgment how to behave.

Where as, I believe, a good leader is a servant for others, for the common goal (whatever the goal is). For example, a leader of a country is a servant for that country, using his skills to lead, manipulate and use required (and available) resources, for the good of all.

For the rest, the followers, I think (read: subjectively), sometimes we need to be conformist, pragmatist, passive, or exemplary followers depends on the situation.

I believe there are times we simply need to follow orders without questioning (for example, in military situation, where the group is facing a dilemmatic situation) and trust the decision from the leadership. Where as other time, where we can questions the effectiveness of decision from our leader, and give them better alternatives.

At the end of the day, it is the purpose of that organisation (whether the purpose is for good or bad, that’s another topic ). Where everyone needs to work together, whether as leaders, or as followers to a common goal, NOT individual. Obviously, this is the value that no one holds anymore, especially in a commercial world

-My two cents-