Junior Officer Relationships

Hornblower

Followership

• Subordinate personal ambition

• Loyalty up the Chain of Command

• Responsibility to comply with orders of leaders

• Know when to speak up

• Personal Code of Conduct

You are a leader

• Leaders and followers have similar traits

• Your leader is following someone else

• Know your organization’s personnel wiring diagram

Discussion

• Being a good follower takes work

• Professionalism whether a leader or a follower

• Self-discipline

• Have goals – best goal is to become a future leader

• Being a follower is one of the many roles you will assume

Traits of a good follower

• Self-managed

• Commitment

• Competence

• Courage

• Compliance

• Self-knowledge (know your strengths and weaknesses)

Application in Real Life

• Go beyond the minimum standard.• Know your role in the organization and live

up to it.• Make sound recommendations (based on

research and knowledge) but comply with the decision once it is made – Must be free to accomplish mission.

• Keep the Chain of Command informed.

Understand Human Nature

• Motivation and discipline

• Need to understand seniors, peers, and subordinates

First Deployment Emotions

• Stress• Fear• Homesickness• Loneliness• Fatigue• Demotivation

Your Sailors have the same fears.

Combat your fears

• Set a positive and cheerful example

• Talk with your Sailors

• Instill a sense of confidence, self worth, and self respect

• Be sincere

• Fine line, but show compassion, empathy, and understanding

Human Needs

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs– Physiological Needs - air, water, food, sleep,

sex, etc.– Safety Needs - establishing stability and

consistency in a chaotic world– Love Needs - Humans have a desire to

belong to groups– Esteem Needs - self-esteem and the attention

and recognition that comes from others– Self Actualization - Be all that you can be

Professionalism

• Know your job, know what is going on

• Dangerous duties demand it

• Mission accomplishment needs it

When Followership Fails…

• Potential loss of life

• Loss of unit effectiveness in combat

• Failure to complete the unit’s mission

Loyalty

• Tailhook (example of bad loyalty)

• Up and down

• Earned

• Don’t be a “yes man”

Visibly Support the Orders of Seniors

• Damn Exec

• Passing the Buck

• Give orders in first person. Make them your orders, not your boss’s.

Bypassing the Chain of Command

• Captain’s Call

• Suggestion boxes

• Open door policies

• 1-800 numbers

• Chain of command should be approachable

Summary

• Being a good follower is training you to become a good leader.

• The most effective follower is that individual whose goal is being a future (better) leader.