without being a great follower?

December 29, 2022 by Mike Manazir — (4-⁠5 minutes)

In Chapter Two of my new book, Learn How to Lead to Win: 33 Powerful Stories and Leadership Lessons I talk about my induction day at the United States Naval Academy.

I will never forget induction day. I awakened before sunrise, after a restless night. I showered, shaved and quickly dressed. I then lugged my suitcase across the Yard to the basement of Bancroft Hall—also known as Mother B. Bancroft Hall is the single dormitory building on the Naval Academy grounds that houses more than 4,000 Midshipmen. It dawned on me as I approached the imposing structure that I was a civilian child out of place here. It was like a highly magnified first day at a new school in a new city in another country. I felt lost and alone.

First year Midshipmen are called Plebes—short for the Roman Plebians or a commoner of ancient Rome. We were to be Plebes for the entire first year, until we completed the freshman course of instruction and earned the title of Fourth Class Midshipman. I had joined a class of humans deemed to be lower than whale scum.

We were shepherded by Midshipman First Class Duane LaFont, a tall, gangly, fearsome man from New Iberia, Louisiana, the town where they make TABASCO hot sauce. Midshipman LaFont was our guide, coach, and teacher. He seemed like an okay sorta guy as he shared the sights and sounds of the Naval Academy as though we were shell-shocked tourists.

We were issued white works. The common uniform was a heavy cotton buttonless top with a V-neck and a square bib falling from the back of your neck completed by an undershirt with blue trim at the neck and short sleeves, trousers that tied at the waist, and a heavy cotton web belt with an oval pewter belt buckle emblazoned with a Naval Academy symbol and two words, Fidelity and Obedience.

The prescribed answer to the common question, “What’s up?” was “Fidelity, sir!” as that was the top word on the white works belt buckle. Obedience wrapped around the bottom. On top of our shaved heads we wore a round white sailor cap with blue trim called a “dixie cup.”

About 4:00 p.m. or 1600 hours, Midshipman LaFont marched his fresh Platoon of civilians to join the square acre of a thousand white-worked inductees who were settling into folding chairs in T-Court (in front of Bancroft Hall). Above us, on the steps leading to the main entrance to Bancroft, were naval officers and First Class Midshipmen in white dress uniforms, led by the Superintendent of the Naval Academy (the Supe).

They encircled the seething mass of youth who had uncomfortably settled into the metal chairs. I remember a foreboding feeling of being trapped, my individuality vanished. I was now a piece of a single organism, uniformly dressed and uniformly pressed into a square. Our knees touched the back of the chair in front and our hips brushed the classmate on each side. The cloying smell of unwashed processed cotton invaded my nostrils. It was claustrophobic.

Have you ever had a time in your life when you’re standing at an imaginary gate, looking through to a different, wondrous world? You can’t quite tell what it is, but it’s different? Not like a movie scene with the aura and mist around an arch or a Dr. Strange vortex in a Marvel picture, but something you can sense. I realize now that I was standing at the first of many gates that would change my life.

I never heard the welcoming remarks, the introduction of our class, or anything else until I stepped through that gate and raised my right hand at the command of the Supe as he stood at the podium, high on the platform in front of us.

“Repeat after me: I, state your name—” With that, a thousand strong voices raised in unison followed his lead and gave our Oath of Office. We all lowered our hands at the conclusion of the oath. The Supe congratulated our class and pronounced us all to be Midshipmen in the United States Navy.

WHAM, almost like a physical shock to the body, everything changed. We were each gathered up by a much-changed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Midshipman First Class Duane LaFont of the United States ByGod Navy who slammed us into our Platoon formation in the white heat of T-Court.

Mr. Nice Guy Dr. Jekyll LaFont has disappeared. In his place is one serious First Class Midshipman, Mr. Hyde. His goal was to make our life miserable, for as much of that day as possible and every 1977 summer day thereafter. We all remember, more than forty years later, how it felt.

Then came the run through hell. Midshipman LaFont dismissed us to get back to our company area, which was three wings over and three decks up from T-Court. Besides having to find our way there, we had to navigate through the screaming horde of gargoyles dressed as First Class Midshipmen who “help” us on our journey. It’s like hobbits in a Lord of the Rings movie, escaping from the orks.

None of us think to walk, of course, but you can’t just sprint through there either. You have to do this sort of jog, called “chopping” in the center of the hallway—called a passageway or p-way—in Bancroft. Each time we came to a corner, we had to chop to the center of the corner, make a 90-degree square turn, and call out, “Go Navy, sir!” or “Beat Army, sir!” in a cacophony of high-pitched Plebe voices crying out, “GoNavySirBeatArmySirGoNavySirBeatArmySir” entwined with the bellowing of the First Class Midshipmen who are correcting our every breath and motion.

You can do no right. You have no idea how you made it. It is one of those micro-journeys in your life of which you have no recollection. I burst into my room, let the door close behind me, bent over, put my hands on my knees, and said out loud, “What have I gotten myself into?”

And then, Midshipman LaFont burst through the door. Braced up against a tiled wall in Bancroft Hall on a blazing hot summer afternoon, I realized Plebe summer training had started and my life was changed forever.

This was the beginning of my leadership journey with the Navy. At the time, I was bewildered. What is all this craziness about? No one had ever treated me like this. What’s the purpose of this seeming nonsense? All you can think about initially is surviving. Looking back on it, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. That’s often the case with young leaders. In time, you begin to realize this seeming chaos and nonsense has a purpose.

I came to realize that to be a leader, I must first learn to be a follower. I came to see the wisdom of the process because it equipped us to be effective leaders who first learned the requirements of followership. It’s a paradigm: effective leaders make the best followers because they know what it takes to be a contributing member of a high-performing team.

The First Class Midshipmen used shock and awe to shake us up and start breaking us down. They had to get our undivided attention. This is serious stuff. If they could not capture our commitment to follow, then the rest of the leadership training would break down. We had to first become obedient followers.

This was done in a time-honored way, which actually attempts to preserve the confidence of the individual while molding diverse individuals into high functioning teams, maximizing individual strengths.

It is as a follower that you earn the trust that fuels your future leadership. You must be trusted to be a steward of the vision and the mission. You must be trusted to know and follow the values of the organization. One follows the other. You must first be a trusted follower, to become a trusted leader.

Take Action

• First, see yourself as a leader-in-training. Model the attitudes and activities of your leader. You cannot always control the outcome, but you can control your attitude and activities to support the team. This is essential leadership discipline.

• Second, learn to be a team player. Put the team first. Sounds cliché, but this is the glue that keeps the team together. Be the person your leader and the team can count on.

• Third, be clear on the why of the vision and the why of the mission. Once that is clear, you have to buy in or get out. (If you cannot buy in to the why—the values and vision of the organization—you owe it to yourself, and to the team and the organization, to get out.) Once you buy in, become a passionate advocate for the vision.

• Fourth, be confident in yourself, your team, and your leader to execute the mission: to fulfill the vision.

• Most importantly, it requires humility to be an effective follower, which is fundamental to being an effective leader. Humble bosses are more effective and easier to follow. When you understand how people follow the why of a leader, you can use your why to rally individuals to achieve team success. What you learn as a humble follower prepares you to be an effective leader.

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