Questions Followers Have a Right to Ask Leaders

From the InsideWork blog by Dan Wooldridge ...

There is much in the news lately that has me thinking about leadership — business, political, religious, academic…

This morning, that led me back to Max DePreeʼs classic, Leadership Jazz. DePree makes the point that any follower has the right to ask many questions of a leader. He suggests this series as a starting point:

• What may I expect from you?
• Can I achieve my own goals by following you?
• Will I reach my potential by working with you?
• Can I entrust my future to you?
• Have you bothered to prepare yourself for leadership?
• Are you ready to be ruthlessly honest?
• Do you have the self-confidence and trust to let me do my job?
• What do you believe?

These are good honest questions. Answered in an honest and authentic way, they would tell a person quite a bit about what to expect from a leader.

But they aren’t answered honestly very often are they… In an age of tight image management, smart handlers do everything in their considerable power to suck the authenticity out of the relationships across which such questions could to be posed. So the answers we get most times are largely staged; the cosmetic equivalent of true disclosures, declarations and promises. It’s all about what the leader seems to be. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

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