We both spend our lives researching, teaching, and writing about leadership and agree with the conventional wisdom that leaders are important. Good leaders and bad leaders and the overwhelming importance of each have become a fixation, an obsession even. There are numberless leadership centers, institutes, and programs; courses, seminars, and workshops, experts, coaches, and gurus—all narrowly focused on leaders at the expense of everyone else, including their followers—confirming that point.
Nowhere is this unhealthy fascination more prevalent than in America, where the virtues of individualism have always been celebrated over the virtues of the commons. The result is a cult of leadership that veritably worships those who attain status and power while under-appreciating and even undermining the inevitable counterpart of leaders: their followers.
Again, we do not question the importance of leaders. Academic literature regularly reiterates that leaders generally have some measure of power, authority, and influence over their followers. For example, some studies show that 30 percent of the variability in team performance can be directly attributed to leaders, their personalities, their values, and the decisions they make.
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