Followship: 16 Lessons to Become a Leader Worth Following

About Women’s Bean Project

From 2003 to 2025 I was the CEO of an employment social enterprise called Women’s Bean Project (WBP), located in Denver, Colorado. The Bean Project, as it is also called, is a food manufacturer that employs women experiencing chronic unemployment. The products consist of a variety of dry food mixes—the first product was a bean soup mix, the genesis of the company’s name—as well as baking mixes, spice blends, and a variety of delicious snacks and candies, which are distributed across the US and online through some of the country’s largest retailers.

But the business isn’t the Bean Project’s primary purpose. WBP believes all women have the power to transform their lives through employment, so they hire women who have typically not ever held a job longer than a year, though their average age is thirty-seven. These women usually have long histories of addiction, incarceration, homelessness, or domestic violence. Their past experiences have created barriers to getting and keeping employment, which is why they apply to WBP. Women are hired for a transitional job that lasts six to nine months. During their time as employees, they work in food production, making all the products, as well as in the shipping and fulfillment department, ensuring those products get to customers across the country. The physical part of the job is called the “bean job” and women spend 70 percent of their paid time doing it.

The Bean Project provides women work experience to learn basic job readiness skills, as well as helping them focus on their psychosocial barriers to employment. Women spend 30 percent of their time working on themselves, which is called the “you job.” During this portion of their time, they get connected to resources for housing and childcare. They are supported while they develop plans for their sobriety, learn skills for healthy relationships, and improve their communication and conflict resolution skills. They also work on improving math and reading, learn planning and organizing, and practice basic computer skills.

WBP is an anomaly in the business world. They are a business, with product sales creating more than 50 percent of the organization’s revenue. They are also a human services organization, and they raise grants and donations to support the program activities that make each woman’s experience unique to her while she is focused on transforming her life. WBP makes products to create jobs and employ women, but the products aren’t the point. The business also creates the opportunity for the women to make new lives for themselves.

The Bean Project is not a place women go to stay the same. It is a place for each woman to create a new life for herself and her family, one where she maintains employment and experiences the dignity of supporting herself and her children. After completing her time at WBP, each woman goes on to a career-focused, entry- level job in the community. These jobs have opportunities for advancement and benefits, and her employer cares that she comes to work because they are invested in her. This will likely be the first time she has had a job such as this. A year after completing the program at WBP, over 95 percent of women are still employed.

My role as the CEO of this organization was the job of a lifetime and gave me an opportunity to learn and grow. I figured out who I was and who I wanted to be as a leader. As I look back on my experiences, there are many times I wish I’d had someone to advise me, challenge me, and support me. This book is a reflection of what I wish I’d known sooner.

Introduction

We are in a leadership crisis. Across sectors and around the world, our belief in leaders has been in steady decline for more than a decade, and we have reached a critical state. People don’t trust their leaders, a fact that is corroborated by research. The Global Agenda Councils conducted a survey in which it identified the issues expected to have the greatest impact on the world in the coming twelve to eighteen months. Eighty-six percent of respondents identified a leadership crisis as their top issue because leaders are mired in factions and not doing enough to solve the big problems of the world.1

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, the economic crisis, and the global outcry about systemic racism that followed, another important indicator of people’s trust, the Edelman Trust Barometer, revealed an accelerated and widespread distrust in societal institutions and leaders around the world. Followers are requiring leaders to work to rebuild trust across sectors including business, government, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs, which are commonly referred to as nonprofit organizations in the US), as well as the media. The declining belief in leadership around the world means not even one sector is truly trusted to do what is right.

Though all trust scores have dropped, in 2022 the Edelman Trust Barometer shared that people’s trust in business now outscores trust in government and other sectors.3 Those surveyed reported feeling that businesses are the only institutions believed to be able to address societal problems such as climate change, economic inequities, and workforce reskilling to ensure economic mobility, while also providing trustworthy information. Societal leadership is now considered a core function of business, and trust has become more localized, i.e., I trust my coworkers and my CEO. Followers want their CEO to speak out on issues, to be personally visible when public policy is being addressed, and to be outspoken about what the company has done to benefit society and shape societal conversations. By contrast, both government and the media are viewed as divisive because they are seen as fueling the cycle of distrust.

Pew Research Center has further documented societal distrust. In research published in 2019, Pew indicated two-thirds of people in the US think their fellow Americans have little to no confidence in the government. Because of its partisan factions, the general belief is that the government has let down its citizens. The Pew report confirms that this lack of trust and the crisis in leadership extends to religious organizations and media. Over the past decade, the media has lost credibility because of the prevalence of news that seems partisan or untrustworthy. Even trust in NGOs, which were historically more trusted than other organizations, has dipped to second place after business. Nearly half of Americans believe nothing can be relied on as it used to be.

Why is this lack of trust a problem? Distrust leads to a lack of confidence, and confidence is essential for economies to function. Without public trust, societies are unable to effectively respond to public health crises, as witnessed during the recent pandemic. A high level of trust is connected with less violence in communities and more economic security. The UN secretary- general warns that distrust threatens to undermine progress toward the world’s Sustainable Development Goals, targets that have been set by the UN to decrease poverty and suffering and increase empowerment across the globe.5 The cycle of distrust threatens societal stability and the lack of strong, inspirational leadership is making it worse.

All institutions that help our society function are built on a foundation of trust. Supporters of NGOs must trust that the organizations they give to are deploying the funds to do the work they say they will and in the way donors expect of them. Often, the supporters are unable to witness the work firsthand and must have faith their gifts are used as intended and the outcomes are being reported accurately and with integrity. For NGOs, the amount of money donated, the numbers of donors, and the retention rate of those donors can serve as proxies for how much trust and confidence supporters have in the organization. Missteps by religious leaders have created a wariness in followers. Too often, leaders who try to maintain the moral high ground end up on the slippery slope toward loss of credibility when their actions don’t match the values they are holding their followers accountable to. We have seen this happen with numerous religious leaders, from Catholic priests to ministers of megachurches.

Whether we look at the media or politicians, our respect for leaders has plummeted. We feel duped by those who say anything to gain our support but do nothing to follow through. Most recently, we witnessed examples during the COVID pandemic. For the first time in at least a half century, we were all being affected by something grave and were looking to our leaders to guide us. Yet too many of these leaders were mired in posturing, providing misinformation, and politicking in ways that felt counterproductive to a solution. Today, many people are wondering where the leaders who might inspire us to follow them have gone. They puzzle over what is missing from those in charge that has left them feeling flat and uninspired.

This widespread dearth of trust makes the case for doing leadership differently. It’s time to turn the focus away from what leaders want to give and toward what followers are seeking from their leaders—what entices people and enlists them to join the leader in accomplishing great things. I call this new way of leading “followship.”

What followers expect from their leaders has shifted. Effective leadership is no longer the command-and-control style of previous generations when the leader was a singular, great individual whom followers did not question. Gone are the days when everyone looked to the individual at the top of the organizational chart to give directives to the people positioned beneath them. Followers have been burned by leaders who required unquestioned authority. They no longer want their leader to save them from having to think or worry about the issues facing the company. No one is seeking hierarchical leadership anymore.

To start on the path toward followship, we must begin by understanding what followers are looking for from their leaders. Today we look to CEOs to take the lead on policy, such as climate change, reskilling, and diversity, as well as expecting them to be a model for long-term thinking. As an NGO leader, I have learned how essential it is for me to meet these expectations of engagement; however, I wonder how many CEOs in other sectors realize what is being asked of them. Not only are leaders expected to lead companies, but followers also want them to take a stand in areas where government has disappointed them. Leaders in business and NGOs are expected to behave as a unifying force in society.

Not surprisingly, many leaders are caught in the gap between where they currently sit because of their training, background, and role models, and where their followers expect them to be. For too long, leaders have been encouraged to think about their own success in an individual way rather than as a big-picture, collective concept. Boards and the public tend to focus on the leader’s accomplishments. They give accolades to the individual at the top to celebrate success, encouraging them to continue their inward focus with no concern for soft skills such as values alignment, self-awareness, and integrity. The leaders haven’t been taught or encouraged to think about how their actions might change for the benefit of systems and society because markets and shareholders reward them for a short-term mindset even when long-term thinking would be better for all.

Leaders are learning the hard way that the relationship between them and their follower has been democratized. Followers now understand their power to choose whether or not to stay with the leader. We need only look at the Great Resignation that occurred in 2021 to see evidence of this disconnect. Followers have realized they are looking for leaders who align with their values and who can serve as a compass to guide their actions. They want their leaders to have the courage to look in the mirror, the integrity to accept what others see, and the gumption to take action to rectify their gaps. And they are willing to show their displeasure by leaving the leader to find new employment.

Followers want their leaders to see them as more than a means to an end. They want to know the leader is concerned for them and their thoughts and feelings. They want someone who is values-driven—who will communicate those values and stay true to them, even when it is hard. Followers want to be heard and be part of the decisions driving their organization.

Even when leaders cannot name these pressures, they feel them. Recently, I was with a group of female CEOs. As we sat around a set of tables configured in a circle, catching up on our recent personnel experiences, the conversation veered toward lamenting the challenges of leading employees. As we talked about recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees, many of the CEOs were frustrated by their feelings that nothing ever seemed to be enough. “People just don’t want to work hard anymore,” one CEO said. “No matter what I do, it isn’t enough,” said another. A third shared that she had nothing more to give. Each of these leaders sat in the gap between what they thought they knew about leading and the shift in their employees’ expectations. Their pain was real and existential, and I suspect their employees were feeling the same.

We are living in a time of paradox for leaders. Jim Rohn, an American entrepreneur and motivational speaker, said it well: “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” Phew.

We put our leaders on a pedestal and then proceed to pick them apart for their inadequacies. We are certainly surrounded by many egocentric leaders; look no further than our most prominent tech entrepreneurs. And no wonder—we created them by perpetuating the myth of the single, brilliant leader who changes the world. The problem is that when they betray our trust, we resent being stuck looking up at them.

And therein lies one of the paradoxical challenges of leadership: leading a company is simultaneously about the leader and not about the leader. People often chose to support Women’s Bean Project based on meeting me. This fact was essential to my role as the leader of this NGO: to bring resources into the organization. Yet, I recognized it was never truly about me, and I understood the danger if I began to believe it was. I realized I could never allow my ego to be tied to my position.

But how do leaders balance the notion that leading depends on them yet is not all about them? I believe it requires the leader to get comfortable sitting between an inward focus on themself and an outward focus on followers and the environment. The inward focus requires the leader to keep their own ego, emotions, and needs in check while focusing on others’ egos, emotions, and needs. It requires both self-awareness—being grounded in the present reality and how they are being perceived—while also looking out to the horizon to create a vision that will inspire others to join them on the journey to a better future. Followship happens when leaders engage and listen to the people they wish to inspire and build trust with.

I served as the CEO of WBP for twenty-two years. This means I had plenty of opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. In this time, I embraced the responsibilities and nuances of my position and came to understand that leading is not something you do. A leader is someone you are. To me, there is little more magical than watching a team of people, led by a leader who has captured their imagination with a vision, engaged their trust with integrity, motivated them with courage, and created enduring bonds as a result of their emotional intelligence, work to accomplish things they might never have thought possible. My aim in sharing with you the keys to what I’ve learned about followship is to save you time and help you avoid making the same mistakes I made.

Throughout the book you will find examples of my own experiences and observations about what has allowed me to lead effectively and where my actions have fallen flat. I have also highlighted examples from well-known leaders, chosen because they exemplify a particular lesson well, even if they struggle with other areas of leadership. Other stories highlight opportunities missed by leaders whose followers would have benefited if only the leaders had made different choices.

I learned that the essence of my job as the CEO was in my ability to enlist people to join me in caring about and working to solve the societal problem WBP exists to address. In my role as the CEO, my job was to inspire people to give their time, talent, and treasure to support the Bean Project. After years of observing, researching other leaders, trying strategies, and adapting to the results, I have come to believe that being a leader worth following isn’t about any one thing but instead a combination of skills and behaviors. This book is not about doing leadership. It is a guide for being a leader. I hope you can use the examples on your own leadership journey, and I encourage you to take what you need and disregard the rest (or store the lessons away until you need them). As we evolve, what we need to support our leadership skills does too.

As I was researching this book, I conducted interviews with friends, colleagues, and others I had met professionally. I started each interview by asking what I hoped would get to the essence