Clever People - Followership Behavior

LEADING CLEVER PEOPLE.
By: Goffee, Rob, Jones, Gareth,
Harvard Business Review,
March 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 3

The psychological relationship leaders have with their clever people is very different from the one they have with traditional followers. Clever people want a high degree of organizational protection and recognition that their ideas are important. They also demand the freedom to explore and fail. They expect their leaders to be intellectually on their plane - but they do not want a leader's talent and skills to outshine their own. That's not to say that all clever people are alike, or that they follow a single path. They do, however, share a number of defining characteristics.


Rob Goffee (rgoffee@london.edu) is a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School in England. Gareth Jones (gjones@london.edu) is a visiting professor at Insead in Fontainebleau, France, and a fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School. Goffee and Jones are also the founding partners of Creative Management Associates, an organizational consulting firm in London. Their HBR article "Managing Authenticity" was published in December 2005.