In today’s manufacturing landscape, executives face unprecedented challenges. With industry turnover rates reaching alarming levels in manufacturing of over 28% vs a national average 3.6% according to TeamSense and replacement costs soaring to twice an employee’s annual salary, the difference between nominal leadership and transformative leadership has never been more consequential. The question is no longer simply how to manage operations but how to build an organization where employees genuinely follow rather than merely comply.
The distinction between having subordinates and having followers represents the fundamental difference between traditional management and true leadership. As Aubrey C. Daniels and James E. Daniels articulate in their seminal work, Measure of a Leader, “Leaders have followers. Managers have subordinates.” This seemingly simple statement contains profound implications for manufacturing executives seeking to navigate today’s complex industrial landscape.
The True Cost of Manufacturing Leadership Failure
The manufacturing sector currently faces a perfect storm of challenges: an aging workforce, shifting skill requirements, and increasing competition for talent. When leadership falls short, the consequences are immediate and measurable:
- Replacement costs reaching 200% of annual salary
- Extended training and development periods
- Significant productivity losses during transitions
- Knowledge drain and disrupted continuity
- Damaged team cohesion and morale
These financial and operational impacts stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes effective leadership. Many manufacturing executives have risen through technical or operational excellence rather than through demonstrated ability to build followership. The result is an environment where compliance is achieved through positional authority rather than genuine influence—a distinction that directly impacts bottom-line results.
Followers vs. Employees: The Critical Distinction
What separates true leaders from mere title-holders? The answer lies in understanding the psychological contract between leaders and those they lead. Daniels and Daniels emphasize that leadership is not conferred by organizational charts but earned through specific behaviors that inspire discretionary effort.
“Leadership is not about who you are; it’s about what you do,” they write. “And more importantly, it’s about what you get others to do willingly.”
This willingness factor distinguishes followers from employees:
Employees:
- Perform to minimum standards
- Require constant oversight
- Act from obligation
- Resist change initiatives
- Withhold discretionary effort
- Focus on compliance
Followers:
- Exceed performance expectations
- Self-monitor quality and output
- Act from commitment
- Champion improvements
- Volunteer discretionary effort
- Focus on contribution
The transition from supervising employees to inspiring followers represents the core challenge for manufacturing leadership today. Data consistently shows that organizations with true followers outperform those with mere employees by significant margins across all key performance indicators.
Measuring Leadership Through Followership
How can manufacturing executives assess their leadership effectiveness? Traditional metrics focusing on production outputs or financial results provide an incomplete picture. Daniels and Daniels propose measuring leadership through observable follower behaviors—the true indicators of leadership impact.
“The only valid measure of leadership is whether people follow voluntarily,” they contend. This perspective shifts assessment from leader attributes to follower responses, creating an objective framework for evaluating leadership effectiveness.
Key behavioral indicators of followership include:
- Discretionary performance – Do team members consistently exceed minimum requirements?
- Innovation initiatives – Do employees proactively suggest and implement improvements?
- Conflict resolution – Do team members address problems directly and constructively?
- Knowledge sharing – Is expertise freely exchanged rather than hoarded?
- Organizational advocacy – Do employees positively represent the company outside work?
- Crisis response – Do team members step up during challenging periods without being asked?
These behavioral measures provide manufacturing executives with tangible metrics for leadership effectiveness beyond traditional productivity and financial indicators.
The Science of Creating Followers
Creating followers rather than managing employees requires understanding the behavioral science behind human motivation and commitment. Daniels and Daniels draw from decades of research in behavioral psychology to identify specific leadership practices that transform the employer-employee relationship.
1. Reinforcement of Discretionary Effort
Manufacturing environments traditionally focus on meeting quotas and maintaining standards. However, this approach often creates a ceiling effect where exceeding standards brings no additional benefit to employees. True leaders systematically identify and reinforce behaviors that go beyond compliance.
Research published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior demonstrates that specific, timely reinforcement of discretionary effort increases such behavior by up to 87% within three months. This requires manufacturing leaders to:
- Clearly define what “above and beyond” looks like in specific roles
- Implement systems to capture instances of exceptional performance
- Provide immediate, specific feedback when discretionary effort occurs
- Create visible connections between extra effort and organizational success
2. Creating Meaningful Work Context
Manufacturing employees often see only their discrete task rather than the full value chain their work supports. Leaders who create followers consistently connect individual contributions to meaningful outcomes.
“People don’t commit to processes; they commit to purposes,” note Daniels and Daniels. This principle requires manufacturing executives to:
- Regularly communicate how specific roles impact customer experience
- Share stories of end-user benefits from quality work
- Create opportunities for employees to interact with customers
- Celebrate collective achievements and their market impact
A study from the Manufacturing Leadership Council found that operations with strong purpose connection experienced 34% lower turnover and 22% higher productivity compared to those focusing solely on process metrics.
3. Developing Mastery Opportunities
The opportunity to develop increasing expertise represents a powerful intrinsic motivator that transforms compliance into commitment. Manufacturing leaders build followership by creating clear pathways to mastery that extend beyond technical skills.
Effective approaches include:
- Developing skills matrices that visualize growth opportunities
- Creating mentor relationships across experience levels
- Providing regular feedback on progress toward mastery
- Celebrating skill acquisition as publicly as production milestones
- Involving experienced team members in training and standard development
4. Autonomy Within Structure
Manufacturing necessarily requires standardization and consistency. However, leaders who build followership find ways to incorporate meaningful autonomy within required parameters. Research in self-determination theory confirms that perceived autonomy significantly increases engagement and discretionary effort.
Manufacturing executives can implement this principle by:
- Involving team members in standard work development
- Creating decision frameworks rather than prescriptive procedures
- Establishing clear boundaries while allowing method flexibility
- Implementing operator-led quality systems
- Supporting employee-initiated improvement projects
Transforming Leadership Communication
Communication patterns represent one of the clearest distinctions between leaders with followers and managers with employees. Daniels and Daniels identify specific communication behaviors that build followership:
1. Shifting from Instruction to Inquiry
Leaders who build followers ask significantly more questions than they issue directives. This inquiry-based approach:
- Demonstrates respect for employee expertise
- Uncovers potential improvements traditional management would miss
- Creates ownership of solutions rather than compliance with directives
- Builds problem-solving capacity throughout the organization
Implementing this shift requires manufacturing leaders to:
- Practice asking “what do you think?” before providing solutions
- Create formal forums for employee input on process changes
- Respond to problems with questions rather than immediate directives
- Recognize and reinforce employee-generated solutions
2. Precision in Recognition
Generic praise (“good job”) has minimal impact on creating followership. Leaders who build followers provide recognition with behavioral precision, clearly identifying:
- The specific action being recognized
- The impact of that action on outcomes
- The value represented by the behavior
This precision reinforcement accelerates the development of organizational values by clearly connecting abstract principles to concrete actions. As Daniels and Daniels note, “What gets reinforced gets repeated.”
3. Feedback as Development Rather Than Correction
How leaders address performance issues dramatically influences followership. Effective manufacturing leaders frame feedback as an investment in employee success rather than criticism of shortcomings. This requires:
- Maintaining a ratio of at least 4:1 positive to corrective interactions
- Focusing feedback on behaviors rather than person attributes
- Connecting feedback to employee goals rather than just organizational needs
- Creating collaborative improvement plans rather than directive remediation
Building Systems That Create Followers
Individual leadership behaviors matter, but sustainable followership requires supportive organizational systems. Manufacturing executives can institutionalize follower-creating practices through systematic approaches:
1. Performance Management Redesign
Traditional manufacturing performance reviews often focus primarily on compliance metrics and occur too infrequently to shape followership behaviors. Leaders who build followers implement systems that:
- Incorporate weekly or monthly feedback conversations
- Balance production metrics with followership behaviors
- Include peer and subordinate input on leadership effectiveness
- Reward collaboration and knowledge sharing, not just individual achievement
- Track discretionary contributions alongside required performance
2. Recognition Systems Beyond Traditional Incentives
While compensation matters, research consistently shows that systematic social recognition creates stronger followership than financial incentives alone. Effective manufacturing leaders implement recognition systems that:
- Operate with high frequency (daily/weekly rather than quarterly/annually)
- Distribute recognition authority throughout the organization
- Connect recognition to specific organizational values
- Make recognition visible without creating inappropriate comparisons
- Include peer-to-peer components rather than flowing only from management
3. Development Pathways Beyond Promotion
Manufacturing organizations often suffer from limited promotion opportunities, creating ceiling effects for employee growth. Leaders who build followers create development systems that:
- Separate skill development from hierarchical advancement
- Recognize and reward increasing expertise through non-promotional means
- Create lateral development opportunities across functional areas
- Establish mentoring roles that leverage experienced employee knowledge
- Implement skill-based compensation components alongside position-based pay
Measuring Leadership Impact Through Retention and Acceleration
Two critical metrics demonstrate the difference between nominal leadership and true leadership in manufacturing environments: retention rates and time-to-proficiency for new employees.
Retention as Leadership Validation
While some turnover is inevitable, patterns of voluntary departure provide clear feedback on leadership effectiveness. Daniels and Daniels note that “people don’t leave organizations; they leave leaders.” Manufacturing executives should:
- Track voluntary turnover by leader rather than only by department
- Conduct detailed exit interviews focusing on leadership experiences
- Measure “regrettable turnover” of high performers separately from overall rates
- Track internal transfer requests as early indicators of leadership issues
- Calculate the full cost of turnover to prioritize retention initiatives
When manufacturing organizations implement follower-focused leadership development, retention improvements of 25-40% are regularly achieved, representing millions in saved replacement costs.
Accelerating New Employee Development
The time required for new employees to reach full productivity provides another key measure of leadership effectiveness. Leaders who create followers rather than manage employees consistently accelerate this timeline through:
- Creating peer mentor relationships rather than relying solely on supervisory training
- Establishing clear behavioral expectations alongside technical requirements
- Providing early opportunities for meaningful contribution
- Implementing graduated challenges rather than extended observation periods
- Creating social inclusion alongside technical onboarding
Manufacturing organizations implementing these approaches have reduced time-to-proficiency by up to 60%, creating substantial productivity gains and reducing the impact of inevitable turnover.
Conclusion: Forging a Future Through Followership
In an era where manufacturing faces relentless pressures – from soaring turnover costs to fierce talent competition – the stakes for leadership have never been higher. The data is clear: replacement costs can reach 200% of an employee’s salary, and organizations with engaged followers consistently outpace those reliant on mere compliance. By embracing the principles outlined in Measure of a Leader and grounding their approach in behavioral science, manufacturing executives can transcend traditional management. The shift from supervising employees to inspiring followers isn’t just a leadership upgrade – it’s a strategic imperative. Those who master this transformation will not only navigate today’s challenges but build resilient, high-performing organizations poised for long-term success. True leadership doesn’t just drive results; it creates a legacy of commitment and excellence that echoes through every level of the operation.
Look for the next blog post from Jon’s series on Manufacturing Leadership that Transforms on Manufacturing International your source for all things Manufacturing:
The Path Forward for Manufacturers: Developing Leaders Who Create Followers
This article draws primarily from concepts presented in “Measure of a Leader” by Aubrey C. Daniels and James E. Daniels, supplemented by research from the Manufacturing Leadership Council, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and principles of behavioral science and self-determination theory.