(00:00-00:12) Daria Rudnik
Hi, David. Thanks. Thanks for being here with me. And I'm excited to talk about leadership and more importantly, followership today with you. Do you want to kind of briefly introduce yourself? Tell us about what you do and

(00:12-00:42) Dr. David Leitner
Okay, sure. My name is Dr. David Leitner, and I am a followership and strategy specialist, which means that I engage with leadership to try and make sure that they use strategy as the glue between their leadership and followership. Where followership is the decision to actively participate in manifesting someone else's vision and purpose and will, and even supporting that and

(00:42-01:06) Dr. David Leitner
bolstering it making it more than it originally was so followership is is very much a choice and um leadership needs to open the door for people to make that choice so that's what i focus on i run workshops and do a lot of strategic consulting which is really the place where that comes out the most thanks i mean this the followership concept is is super interesting

(01:06-01:34) Daria Rudnik
And I'll leave it for later. That's fine. Like for now, just about like you. So you, you teach, well, okay. The first thing I kind of was checking your LinkedIn profile and I know you're a speaker, a keynote speaker, a consultant. And then I'm saying you are the chief Riddler? Riddler. Riddler. Sorry. Yeah. What is it? Tell us about that. Okay. So I've had a, I've done consulting for a very long time and it was always,

(01:34-02:04) Dr. David Leitner
sort of ad hoc. And then we decided to open a company that's called Riddle, H-R-Y-D-L. It's actually the initials of my family, my children and my wife and me all put together. And I was like, well, if we're going to call it Riddle, I can be the chief riddler. I can be the person who asks all the really hard questions. And I found that that's really integral to what it means to be a mentor and a professor in university and a consultant is it's not just about giving people advice.

(02:04-02:25) Daria Rudnik
It's about being someone who asks questions, lots and lots of questions. So yeah, I'm the chief heardlearn and I like to ask questions. Cool. I mean, I love that. I mean, asking questions is what I do. I mean, as a coach, I ask questions and I think it's, I mean, it's so powerful when people can find the answers or hear the questions that they didn't expect to hear.

(02:26-02:45) Daria Rudnik
And well, obviously as a coach, as a consultant, you ask a lot of questions. I'm curious, how can you do that being a professor? Where are you actually telling students something they need to learn? My courses don't generally have me just standing up and lecturing. I will always engage the students with questions.

(02:45-03:04) Dr. David Leitner
either in their own experience, where have you experienced something like this when we're talking about leadership and followership and strategy, but also where I don't necessarily want them to just get the information from me. I'd rather they search for the information and then teach me what they've learned and then I'll help refine that. So I might ask a question like,

(03:04-03:32) Dr. David Leitner
I want you to find out some examples of servant followership and how it's used and how servant leadership and how it's used and how it can apply to creating strategy. And so then they have to go deep dive into that and bring the answers and really think about, well, what does it mean to be a servant leader? And then from there, we might go into a discussion of, well, where have you experienced this in your own life? Have you been a servant leader? Have you experienced someone who

(03:32-03:54) Dr. David Leitner
you know, engaged in servant leadership, either in work or in your family, where one of your parents might have been a servant leader at times or, and by using questions, I find, and when, especially when students learn on their own or do the research on their own, the learning is much deeper and much more engaged. And if I just stand up and teach.

(03:55-04:05) Daria Rudnik
Well, it sounds like the servant leadership approach. Okay, how do you see this? How they align the servant leadership and followership? Do you need followership when you have servant leadership?

(04:07-04:33) Dr. David Leitner
I think you always need to see the two sides of the coin. It's just because someone is a servant leader doesn't mean they don't have followership. And servant leadership is like a servant leader or servant leadership is one example of a style someone might choose. And they might jump from being a servant leader to being, you know, authoritative to being democratic. The idea of I have a style of leadership, I think, is one of the big fallacies of

(04:33-04:50) Dr. David Leitner
of the leadership movement. It's like you have to choose your leadership style. No, you have to learn as many leadership styles as you possibly can. And then when you use followership, when you perceive followership in your people, figure out what's the right leadership style

(04:50-05:05) Dr. David Leitner
for this person or for this group in this moment. It's not always going to be the same. And so when you're asking about servant leadership, yeah, they still need followers. What's interesting is that very often what a servant leader will do is they will take one of their followers and maybe

(05:05-05:31) Dr. David Leitner
see that they are emerging in leadership not as a position but within the group that person is emerging as a leader and is is guiding some new process and instead of taking control of the process and saying i'm going to lead it they step into that role of almost followership of their own and they they act in servitude of this new this process that's being led by someone else even though it's not their position

(05:31-05:57) Dr. David Leitner
And that servant leadership allows them to bring the authority that needs to be brought to bear, bring resources, but do it toward somebody else's mission. And also with the idea that they're willing to sacrifice some of their own position and authority for the greater good of the team. So yeah, it's not like there's no followers involved there. If anything, servant leadership in some ways is a great example of when a leader chooses to act in followership.

(05:57-06:26) Dr. David Leitner
at times. Sometimes servant leadership is something else entirely. It's where you take the hit from your own leaders because you want to protect your team. Or when you act for the benefit of your team upward and you go, you know, I'm willing to sacrifice my own ego for the good of the team because that's what needs to happen. And that's an act of followership as well towards your manager. So it depends. So who is the leader and who is the follower? What's the difference between a leader and a

(06:26-06:45) Dr. David Leitner
So leadership to my mind is someone who is guiding a strategic process and engages with the act of helping others maximize their efforts towards that vision that they've set and that process that they're guiding.

(06:45-07:14) Dr. David Leitner
while a follower is someone who is actively choosing to participate in the process and bringing to the best of their ability the energy and resources necessary from their self to maximize the outcomes that are expected. So it's really like if you think of leadership as guiding process and followership as manifesting and effectively working towards process, that's what those two sides look like. Leaders really need, I mean,

(07:14-07:33) Dr. David Leitner
It's one of the major questions we ask, right? Like what makes someone a leader? And like people will say, oh, authority, position, charisma, all these traits, you know, or something that can be given. And very few people actually go, well, they have people who follow them.

(07:33-07:59) Dr. David Leitner
But to be a leader means that you have people who are following you. Like that's just sort of a baseline definition of leadership. Leadership means you have people who are following you somewhere. Where are you going? So followership is I'm following someone. I'm actively choosing that process. And I think that when we look at it through that lens, it means that

(08:00-08:29) Dr. David Leitner
we've moved away from position leadership. And we've moved away from leadership being something that's granted from above and looking at it differently and saying, no, the leadership aspect of this is what's granted from below. What's granted from above is the position of manager, the rights and authorities and the responsibilities that go along with the position I have, or that I've created for myself by taking on a role or creating a business or whatever, right? I'm a business owner. Okay, you own the business.

(08:30-08:59) Dr. David Leitner
You might have workers that doesn't even have followers necessarily. So I think that that's part of it is understanding that just because you own the business doesn't mean that people are really following you. It's different. So it's the followers who create leaders, not leaders create other leaders. I think that one of the jobs of really great leaders is to grow other people into leadership. But it's also to support followership.

(09:00-09:28) Dr. David Leitner
I think the greatest leaders are the ones who recognize when someone is primed for leadership growth and when someone is really primed for being exemplary followers for a while and supporting them in that position. I just had a talk with someone who is in charge of the SDR department and a company.

(09:28-09:46) Dr. David Leitner
And one of the things that came across really clearly is, you know, it takes about two years for someone to get out of SDR and into the next phase of their career. But a lot of people want to jump, you know, there are six months in SDR, there are a year in SDR and they're already ready. They're like revving and rearing to go. Yeah.

(09:46-10:14) Dr. David Leitner
Really, part of the act of leadership there is to say to that person, wait a second, I want to get you to the point where you can be a leader. But part of that right now is acting in followership and staying in followership for longer so that you can grow into this person you want to be and make this leap. So I don't think that there's a contradiction between the statement leaders grow other leaders and the idea that leaders still need followers to be leaders.

(10:14-10:34) Dr. David Leitner
There's no contradiction between those two, at least to my point. So how do you grow followership? Like, what do you do? Okay, so growing followership is about creating three things. One is a mutual vision, which I think is true for any, you know, you look at a company, you look at any group, you're talking about mutual vision.

(10:35-10:46) Dr. David Leitner
And that, where are we going from here? Why are we doing this whole thing? I think the second thing is to create a culture of both performance excellence and trust.

(10:47-11:11) Dr. David Leitner
And when you create a culture, which is performance, strives for performance, excellence and trust, and you allow for ownership in that field, what you've essentially done is created a realm for followership to thrive. And then the last part of it is about opening the door for people to present themselves as effective followers. What that means is.

(11:11-11:34) Dr. David Leitner
really asking questions about, well, where have you been successful? What's been going on? And how can I help you get your job done better? And when you ask someone that, you're not asking them how you can grow them into a leader. You're asking how can you help them be better followers? How can you help them upscale, rescale, or better perform

(11:34-11:52) Dr. David Leitner
both in terms of their performance, but also on the team. How can I help you with your teammates so that things will be better? That's where followership comes in from a leader's perspective. I think from a followership perspective, from a follower's perspective, and here's where I would disagree with what most people think of as managing up.

(11:52-12:19) Dr. David Leitner
Followership and managing up are not the same thing. And I think a lot of people sort of mix the two together. To my mind, for instance, managing up is I have an idea for a project and I need to convince my boss that it's worthwhile to put resources on other stuff. That's managing up. I'm managing up. I'm trying to get my boss to align with me. I want him to see me as a leader. I want him to recognize what my needs are.

(12:20-12:43) Dr. David Leitner
Right, so that's managing up. Followership, on the other hand, is stepping in and going, how can I help to better manifest your will? What can I do to make what you want to see in the world happen easier? What can I take off of your plate in order to give you the time to focus on what you need to focus on and that maximizes my skill sets to your advantage?

(12:43-13:06) Dr. David Leitner
Those are acts of exemplary followership. Those are acts of a strategic partner, a strategic follower, where it's not about, I'm not managing up. I'm not trying to get them to do things I want, but I am essentially saying to them, I want you to be the best manager you can possibly be. How can I help you? And I do think that those are two very, they're not very different, but they're sort of parallel tracks that you need to ride.

(13:06-13:35) Dr. David Leitner
in your relationship with your leader. And I think that's true on every level. I think a vice president who doesn't talk to their CEO, CO, whatever it is that they're under, and talk to them about both their own projects that they'd like to see and how they can get funding for that, but also talk to them about, well, how can I help to make sure that our whole department is really aligned well and aligned with the overall company strategy?

(13:36-13:52) Daria Rudnik
you know, they're not doing followership. And then that doesn't trickle down to the next level who goes, well, how can I help? And how can I? I mean, you can't have, like, you can't manage up without supporting your leader and without being a good follower, because otherwise, why would they accept your project?

(13:52-14:12) Dr. David Leitner
You hope. I mean, not hope, I guess. Yeah, if you're not acting in strategic followership, the likelihood that your boss lets you manage up, down significantly. Even if you're brilliant. And that's the thing. There are people who are absolutely brilliant, but they've never taken the steps necessary

(14:12-14:39) Dr. David Leitner
to really get their boss to see them as a strategic partner. And so when they come in with a brilliant, great idea and, you know, it's whatever, the boss is much less likely to be willing to accept that influence because they never took the time to create that kind of relationship. And why would people want to be followers? Like, why would they, like, I know I want to be a leader and I'll work hard to be a leader. Why do I need to be a follower?

(14:42-14:57) Dr. David Leitner
I think that there's two things here that I can, two ways I can answer. Number one, I can go statistics. Statistics, like research has shown us recently that like 50% of the American workforce, especially the younger generation of the American workforce, not interested in leadership. They simply want it.

(14:57-15:20) Dr. David Leitner
be exceptional in the skills that they love doing, the things they love doing. And the moment they take on leadership and they take on management or leadership or management, they're no longer involved in the things that they love doing. And therefore, why would I do that? So if we look at it from that perspective, the answer is because you want to do what you love doing. You don't want to do things that necessarily are outside the realm of your comfort zone and or outside the realm of the things that interest you.

(15:21-15:47) Dr. David Leitner
That's number one. So I think that part of being a follower or part of the reason someone might be a follower is simply because they want to do something they love and continue doing the things that they love, which can lead to being a tech lead or whatever. Like there's definitely other ways, but that's one part of it. I think the other part of choosing followership is recognizing that, and I'm going to use broad numbers, but it's not nowhere near accurate, but close. 80% of the time and 80% of the organization, you're a follower. You're not

(15:47-16:07) Dr. David Leitner
you just are that's just a fact okay now if you choose if you don't choose to act in followership then you are simply being a cog in the wheel when you choose to act in followership now you are choosing it's about your choice about what that means and how your energy is going to be used and you are maximizing your potential within the organization

(16:07-16:33) Dr. David Leitner
That's a really good reason to choose followership and look at yourself as a follower instead of looking at yourself as a leader. Might you move into leadership? Yeah, you could even be in a position of leadership. You could be a manager. But if you look at yourself as, well, how am I exemplifying followership and see myself as a follower, you will actually improve how you come across to everybody. And that's a hugely impactful thing.

(16:34-16:54) Daria Rudnik
So those are two major reasons why I would say people would choose followership. One is for impact and one is for personal comfort and personal pleasure and where they love to be. I was working on my book and I can remember the conversation I had with some managers and like most of the managers, like you said, they're not just leaders of their teams, but they also follow some bigger teams.

(16:54-17:11) Daria Rudnik
But the trick is when you ask a C4, okay, what's your team? What are they saying? My team is a finance team. Very few of them. I mean, I never met a person who said, my team is where I am a team member, whether it's C-suite or anything. My team is where I am a leader.

(17:11-17:39) Dr. David Leitner
That is more below me. Right. Or, and it's interesting because the only time you'll actually hear people talk about their own team, the people who are on their level as a team are the people who are at the very bottom and are all on the same team. I'm on, you know, this development team. Okay. So you're on that development team. Got it. Or I'm on this project team. Great. I think, okay. So I think there's two reasons for this. And I think that what's very interesting is that, um,

(17:39-18:07) Dr. David Leitner
The nature of teams has never been defined by what level you are at the organization, but rather by what you do in the organization. So even a team lead will talk about him being the leader of that team. I'm part of that team or I lead this team and so on and so forth. So you get a manager from finance and a manager from, you know, marketing who are on the same level and they don't see themselves on the same team. And that's actually really problematic.

(18:07-18:28) Dr. David Leitner
it negatively impacts their cross-communications. It creates huge silos. It creates all kinds of problems. And what happens is that, you know, you see that at every level and it starts at the C-suite. If the way the C-suite talks and treats each other and treats other departments is me, my department, you, your department, as opposed to

(18:29-18:53) Dr. David Leitner
hey, how can I help marketing? How can I help finance? How can I help? Then it doesn't trickle down to as a cultural idea of we're all on the same team at every level and we're supposed to be supporting each other. So I think that that speaks to that idea of my team is my team as opposed to this is my team. And I think that

(18:53-19:14) Dr. David Leitner
Part of it is also a function of leadership bias that we have. The Western culture for the last, it's not just Western culture. It's a lot of culture. In Asia, it's a little bit different, but except for the bubbles of Asia, the cultural perspective has been one of leadership, leadership, leadership. We even talk about self-leadership.

(19:14-19:38) Dr. David Leitner
Even on the lowest level, we expect people to have self-leadership and we don't talk about followership. We don't talk about teamwork. We don't talk about those are not the discussions we're having. And that is hugely impactful because then the glass is through which we perceive everybody and every position and every task is through the lens of leadership. It's like...

(19:39-20:06) Dr. David Leitner
On New Year's Day, people write down their New Year's resolutions. And those would be essentially goals. Here are my goals for the year. I want to lose 10 pounds. I want to learn a new language. And then they don't act in followership to their own leadership. They've set these goals. They've set this pattern, this vision for themselves. They've maybe even set out a strategic process that they want to go through.

(20:06-20:33) Dr. David Leitner
But then in followership, self-followership, they fail. They don't bring their best self forward towards those goals. They don't, right? And we talk about it as self-leadership. One of the things I'll do when I'm working with an individual is, are you being a self-follower? Are you following your values? Are you following what you hold to be true in the world? Are you following the goals and the patterns you're setting? And are you working to maximize yourself in these things that you've said? And the idea of self-followership, people go...

(20:33-20:55) Dr. David Leitner
What? I don't know what you're talking about. And I'm like, okay. And we have this conversation and then all of a sudden it goes, no, you're not always a leader for yourself. You are actually need to act in self followership because if you don't, then you are bound to continually change the patterns and try and continually guide process without actually maximizing process.

(20:55-21:20) Dr. David Leitner
But that's not the way it works. It's not how we change. It's not how we grow. It's not how teams grow. Teams don't grow when each person is trying to be the leader. Teams don't succeed when everyone's trying to lead. Never. When everyone's trying to lead on a team, what you get is friction and schisms and arguments and fighting. There's a lack of trust. There's no commitment. You can't follow through. Nothing happens. You get stuck.

(21:20-21:47) Dr. David Leitner
But if everyone's acting in followership or if someone emerges on a team for a moment or two or for an hour or two or for a year as the primary mover and shaker of that team, not the position leader, but the person who's got all the great ideas and really understands how to get the teammates working together. And the person in the position of management goes, all right, I'll make sure that you get what you need. I'm going to be a great follower too. But the team works well together as a result.

(21:47-22:14) Dr. David Leitner
And that's true on every level. That's when, you know, like it's when upper management has to take someone from two different departments and get them to work together. And you look at them, you go, look, this is not about your team or your team. It's about you guys working together to get this thing done. And, you know, that smack on the back of the head that they need to understand that that act of followership is so greatly important in this in this moment.

(22:15-22:41) Dr. David Leitner
So yeah, I definitely see the world through a very different lens than leadership. I'm not denying that leadership is important. I'm not. Leadership is very important. But I think there's a place for followership to start being significantly part of the discussion. And there was just, what's interesting is there was just a conference in the United States, a leadership conference. And

(22:41-23:05) Dr. David Leitner
At the end of the conference, they did a poll to see what were some of the major topics that were now rising up. And followership was finally finding its place as a major topic of discussion in leadership, in the leadership conference, which was phenomenal because it hadn't been, it hasn't been ever. And I'm really glad to see that change starting to trickle into our world.

(23:06-23:29) Daria Rudnik
Yeah. And it's good if leaders discuss about like themselves, how I can be a better follower, not how I can make my followers better followers, but how I can be a better follower. And what you said about shared leadership, like when someone emerges on my team, how can I better be a better follower, even if I am kind of hierarchically a manager or a leader or a boss or a business owner?

(23:29-23:54) Dr. David Leitner
Yeah, it's the question of whether or not the person feels threatened by the emergence of another leader, right? A lot of people who are in a position of leadership, where that leadership is a position that's been granted to them by somebody else, they're very worried that if someone else is perceived as being a better leader, well, then that person is going to take my job.

(23:56-24:13) Dr. David Leitner
And I don't, like my experience has been that that's not the case. My experience has been that when someone actively acts in followership of someone who's emerging in leadership, their leaders, the person who was essentially given them, granted them that position, sees that as a good thing.

(24:14-24:41) Dr. David Leitner
because they understand that this person has humility and knows when they aren't the person who needs to be leading, they just need to be the person who's managing and making sure that all the rules, like, all the boxes are getting checked. All the boxes are checked, great, I don't need to lead in order to do that. But I definitely think that part of it is this egotistical, like, and it's not egotistical in the sense of, look at me, it's egotistical in the sense of feeling very threatened.

(24:41-25:04) Dr. David Leitner
by someone emerging in leadership because I might lose my job. And I think that's also part of the culture that we can change is that it's okay if you're the position leader to let someone else actually guide the process for a while. Nobody's going to see that as a bad thing. Yeah. And it's, again, it's ego. It's okay to say that I am a part of a bigger team and not saying I am a leader over whatever it

(25:05-25:22) Dr. David Leitner
I think that really it all boils down to strategy. When we get down to it, the strategic process is what brings everyone together, right? We're all in this for some greater like end goal. We want to change the world somehow or we want to

(25:22-25:45) Dr. David Leitner
try and keep the world in some state of status quo, one or the other. And so we set a vision for what that looks like. And we set objectives and goals and metrics and all kinds of other things that'll allow us to get from where we are now to the end of the year, the end of five years, 10 years, whatever we're looking at. And we all join together.

(25:46-26:12) Dr. David Leitner
people guiding each level of this process and each phase of it and each stage of it. And the people who are executing on this process and making it happen, manifesting it. This is one big group together. And if we see ourselves as one big group moving the whole ship, right? We are all part of one ship heading in this direction and we want to get to this point. And here are the different points along the way that we kind of have to hit to get there.

(26:13-26:33) Dr. David Leitner
And here's where we need to refuel. And here's where we need to, you know, let some passengers off and let some passengers on. That's the same thing as running a big company or a small company. Like that's what it is. And when we think of ourselves in that strategic mindset, then leadership and followership makes a lot of sense. You can't have tons of captains. You can't have...

(26:33-26:59) Dr. David Leitner
tons of first mates you can't have you need a captain you need one first mate you need you know a couple of people running the different departments in the ship and their job is to make sure that those departments are running smoothly and they report to the captain but at the end of the day the people who are actually doing the work if they aren't willing to do the work well and report that upward and let everyone know what's going on you're going to find that the boat's got a leak after the boat started sinking

(26:59-27:29) Dr. David Leitner
And don't you want to know about the boat sinking when it starts to sink? Like when the whole, like that stuff. Kind of want to know that in advance. Or when you see the iceberg, you know, 20 miles ahead. Hey, there's an iceberg ahead. Maybe we should avoid it. So I don't know. Like that's sort of where I see it. What do you think is, like we have organization and we have like the executors, we have some middle managers, we have C-suite, we have the owner. What is the best, like where do you want to start building this culture of followers?

(27:30-27:49) Dr. David Leitner
In my mind, followership, the best place for followership to really start is like C-suite and just below it. Really, it's where people who are VPs, senior management, they start talking followership. I love working with smaller companies, for instance, because smaller companies, you don't have that whole breakdown. You've got maybe...

(27:49-28:13) Dr. David Leitner
two or three people who are running the company and you've got 15 people who are all doing all kinds of mixed jobs perhaps but at the end of the day you really just want each of these little teams that's on this in this group to act in followership but it's no different with a c-suite right you just take that and you multiply it with with levels below it of different different team levels right ultimately if if the

(28:14-28:41) Dr. David Leitner
If the C-suite and the VPs and the senior managers talk followership and how they act in followership for the people above them and how they are acting as teammates with the people who are on their level, then that will trickle down to middle management, to the team leads, and down to the floor, wherever the floor is. One of the most amazing acts of followership I ever saw was when a VP...

(28:41-29:08) Dr. David Leitner
Saw that one of the teams was having a real problem. And he happened to have the skill set still for like running what that person, that team was doing. Like three layers below him. Like someone had passed on really quickly that there was a problem. And he went and got his hands dirty. You know, he went, he went out and sat down at a phone and started working with what had to happen. And he accepted the leadership of the team lead.

(29:09-29:38) Dr. David Leitner
who was guiding this process that was sinking. And it was like, what? Yeah. The VP knew that he had the skillset necessary and he could generate, like he could clear his calendar easier than anyone else in that area and said, I'm going to step in. And he did. And he did it for like three days. When he came in and every single day, every day, he was like, I'm not the VP right now. I'm one of your teammates. What do you need me to do? And everyone saw it. Everyone understood.

(29:38-29:51) Dr. David Leitner
And it changed the dynamic of the entire, entire team and the entire company. Cause the moment one VP did that, everyone really began to understand what it meant when they said followership is important.

(29:52-30:17) Dr. David Leitner
And was that an act of leadership as an example? Yeah, absolutely. That was an act of leadership in example. But what he was demonstrating by walking into the room and saying, you're in charge. Don't treat me like the VP right now. I'm one of your workers. How can I help? And then maximize what he could bring to the table in that function. That was an act of followership.

(30:17-30:29) Dr. David Leitner
And it was spectacular. So I think that when we allow for the senior management and upper management to really talk about

(30:30-30:58) Dr. David Leitner
followership and not just make everything about leadership and especially when we talk strategy and i think that that's sometimes more important than talking followership it's just talking strategy and how what are you going to bring to the table to help us get this done and what are you going to bring to the table don't even need to use the word followership it's a followership attitude right i i like when we use the word followership it's nice because it makes it more than just leadership leadership but but

(30:58-31:22) Dr. David Leitner
you don't need to if you really like and i'll say followership to certain people and they'll be like i don't want to be a follower okay fine so be a team player you know like find a different way to talk about it no problem but ultimately it's like no we can and we should really let people know how much we appreciate their followership i have a friend um

(31:23-31:52) Dr. David Leitner
It was actually he and his wife. They own a company. And they created a followership award as part of their quarterly award system and yearly award. They call it followership award? Followership award. The person who demonstrated the most exemplary strategic followership on the team, on, you know, in the company. And people get nominated for it for being, you know, a great team player. Like there's leadership award, team player award, and followership award. And so it was who was really great at being leader.

(31:53-32:04) Dr. David Leitner
And you didn't have to be in a leadership position to get it. You just had to have demonstrated the ability to guide a strategic process and help other people maximize themselves in that process.

(32:05-32:34) Dr. David Leitner
That's how they defined leadership, the leadership award. The team player award was the person who demonstrated to those people on his level that they were prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to maximize the team's capacity to get things done, the people on his level. And then the followership award, the people who exemplified strategic partnership with the leadership of the organization and getting things done for the organization with no thought to them, their own self and their own needs and whatever.

(32:34-32:57) Dr. David Leitner
And people are really proud to be thought of as like good followers. You make it something people can be proud of. And that changes a lot. It makes it okay to be an individual contributor. It makes it okay to be like really great at what you do and help other people be really great at what they do without being ashamed of being in the IC and saying, I don't want a position of leadership.

(32:57-33:16) Daria Rudnik
I mean, it's a great, like different dimensions of dynamics in the organization where CEO, I guess, C-Suite leader can be a follower and someone from the line manager can be a great leader or someone in a digital contributor can be a great leader. I mean, all those sort of things that show up that, yeah, everything is important.

(33:17-33:40) Dr. David Leitner
Yeah. And I think that what's really great is that if you talk about it through the lens of strategy, where guiding strategy, helping others manifest and get things done strategically and supporting and bringing their best selves to manifestation of strategy. Right. And you're also making sure everyone understands what strategy means for your organization.

(33:40-33:59) Dr. David Leitner
and what the strategic process is. And it means that everyone wants to know where we act strategically and what's my team's part in the strategic process that we're going through. How are we impacting our objectives for this quarter, for this year? Are we impacting vision? It's not just my work, but my work has impact now.

(34:00-34:28) Dr. David Leitner
And when we use impact as metric for someone's success, as opposed to how productive they are, productivity in and of itself is a horrible metric for judging someone's worth. How impactful they were, however, how much did they move the needle? How trustworthy they are. Those are wonderful metrics for knowing what someone's worth in an organization. But we use productivity as our main metric, which in my mind is silly.

(34:28-34:37) Daria Rudnik
your personal journey. You are an IDF veteran. How does that, like how does this experience in the Army shows up in your views on leadership, followership, teamwork?

(34:39-35:09) Dr. David Leitner
It's interesting. In the Army, I was in a special operations unit. And so the general attitude there was everyone needs to be pitching in and things like that. But even in, you know, spec ops, you will find that there is like this one person who's a little bit more egocentric, taking care of themselves, not taking care of everyone else, not going above and beyond. And I think that if anything, what that did for me is it demonstrated just how important

(35:10-35:32) Dr. David Leitner
followership was it wasn't about whether or not you were the officer or you know the squad commander for the team what mattered was when things went south really and things were not going well who was who was stepping into the muck and pushing pushing themselves to help the whole team move forward and keep us all going

(35:32-36:01) Dr. David Leitner
who was putting out their hand to help someone else, who was pushing from behind, that kind of thing. And I think that that's a big part of what that taught me. Being a disabled veteran, one of the things that it's taught me is that energy is a very, very, very, like personal energy is a very finite resource on the day to day. I find that because of my disability and what I face on the day to day, I'm very picky about how I use my energy.

(36:01-36:13) Dr. David Leitner
And I think that while I'm aware of it, most people aren't. And I think that if there's a lesson in that, it's be more aware of how you choose to use your energy

(36:14-36:43) Dr. David Leitner
and how your energy is being used by others. Because ultimately, when you act in followership, you're letting someone else use your energy for something. And when you don't make that choice about where you're going to say no, and when you're going to say this is the boundary of where I'm willing to let my energy go towards this idea, people are energy hogs. They have no problem using and abusing your energy ad nauseum. And I think that's a huge lesson I learned through my disability is that I need to be super, super strict

(36:43-37:10) Daria Rudnik
with my own energy and how I use it and who I'm willing to use it for and why I'm willing. So yeah, those are two major lessons I've learned from that. Thanks, David. That's an incredible conversation. There's lots of valuable information. I mean, you have a great journey in leadership and fellowship. Is there anything that I haven't asked you, but you think it's important to share with the audience? I think you've asked that I don't and I'd like to share with the audience.

(37:11-37:37) Dr. David Leitner
I think that if there's one thing I've sort of suggested at it, but I haven't said it, it's okay to choose to be a follower. You know, we talked about it as a lot of things, but the idea that you get to choose, ultimately we get to choose our followership, who and what we follow and why. And I think that

(37:39-38:06) Dr. David Leitner
We haven't talked about what that choice means. That choice means that you believe in something and you believe in something bigger than yourself. When you do that, when you act, when you choose to put yourself towards something that's bigger than you, it really does make it worthwhile when it's your energy and it's your time and it's all the other things that go into it.

(38:07-38:24) Dr. David Leitner
That choice is super important. Don't let it be made for you. I think that that's a message that I don't know if I made it as clear as I'd like, but choose wisely. Thanks. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having this conversation. Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah, thanks for being there.