Followers can be defined by their rank – followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than do their superiors.
Followers can also be defined by their behavior – followers go along with what their leaders want and intend.
I use the first definition. In my lexicon followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than do their superiors and who therefore usually, but not invariably, fall into line.
Here’s another definition – this one of a whistleblower. Whistleblowers are followers who try to stop their leaders from being bad by publicly exposing their noxious – as in illegal, or abusive, or unsafe – behaviors.
Blowing the whistle is risky business. Often the stakes are high, and the deck is stacked against the far weaker follower in favor of the far stronger leader. Moreover, when whistleblowers fail, when their leaders survive their assault, the former usually pay a high price. They suffer not only professionally but personally, and, frequently, financially.
However, when a whistleblower does succeed in focusing widespread attention on a leader’s wrongdoing, thereby damaging, sometimes badly, his or her reputation, the outcome can be different. Very different.
Frances Haugen, the woman who testified before the U.S. Congress against Facebook, and against its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg – and who is doing the same today before members of the British Parliament – is such a whistleblower. Even now she has succeeded in doing what she wanted and intended. Which explains why, even now, still early in the process, she has transformed from powerless follower into a powerful leader.
What enabled her to succeed where others typically fail? A brief systemic analysis provides some answers to this question. Recall, the leadership system has three parts: 1) the leader; 2) the followers; and 3) the contexts.
Facebook’s founder and leader has been Mark Zuckerberg. But in some ways – certainly in terms of his public reputation – his time has come and gone. Once greatly admired as one of the boy geniuses of Silicon Valley, he is now widely viewed as not only rapacious but malicious. As a man who, by his own testimony, puts his company ahead of his country.
The follower in this case is Haugen herself. Professionally well credentialed, before going public she made certain also to be exceedingly well-armed. She accrued a large trove of previously secret Facebook documents that made her case even before she made her case. She did nevertheless testify before Congress, for long stretches, responding to questions with superlative precision and poise.
Finally, there is the context. The moment for Haugen’s attack on Facebook was right. In fact, it was ripe for such an assault. Worldwide the public’s patience with Facebook has been wearing thin, especially given recent revelations about the damage Facebook has inflicted on everything from the health and well-being of teenaged girls to the health and wellbeing of liberal democracies.
Whistleblowing is risky business. Nothing Haugen has accomplished changes this. What she has however done is to remind us that when the stars are aligned the weak can successfully take on the strong. For whatever the ultimate outcome of what she has done, it is she, Haugen, who for the moment is in the lead, and it is he, Zuckerberg, who for the moment is forced to follow.