Flip Skills

Do you want all your employees to be leaders or followers?

The answer may surprise you. Marc Hurwitz, founder and CEO of Flipskills, thinks companies should give this subject a lot more attention. Marc indicates that People working in organizations have multiple roles which they have to perform well to be effective.

Most people need to be a leader (formally or informally), a teammate or peer, and a follower — even the CEO is a follower to the Board of Directors! Sometimes we have to play all the roles at the same time. For example, we could be in a meeting with our boss, our staff, and some of our peers, and have to Flip between roles adeptly. These are three separate, distinct, yet interrelated roles and the failure to do one of them well, even if the other two areas are solid, can hurt careers and affect the bottom line of companies. 

It is crucial to understand the composition of the three roles — their shared characteristics, distinct characteristics, and their interrelationships.

Many people and companies fail to properly understand the interrelationship between the roles of a leader, peer, and follower. Often one of the roles has gone missing! For example, the value of one of the roles, followership, is often discounted. To highlight the absurdity of this, imagine what would happen if we took a pair of dancers and only trained them to lead. No matter how proficient they became at leading, the partnership would not work.

Some organizations have begun to appreciate the oversight, as showcased by the prevalence of 360° assessment tools. These tools are used to elicit key perceptions about a person’s on-the-job skills and behaviours, using feedback from their staff, peers, and leaders. While these evaluation tools have gained popularity, big gaps remain in the corresponding action plans and performance evaluation systems.

When you're making your next hiring decision, or applying for your next job try looking at yourself or your candidate through the lens of Flip Skills. You may find it changes the way you look at interactions in the workplace.