Are you more of a leader or a follower? What if you were told that’s irrelevant? How come?

• There will come points in your life where you will have to at least be able to direct people to get things done – aka as a leader?
• There will come times when you will want to take a backseat and allow others who are more knowledgeable in an area than you are to take the lead – aka as a follower?

You can take on either role at any different point and time in your life.

Now, if we shift the focus hierarchically, where being a leader or manager is your primary role with followers beneath you, then that becomes a different story.

This begs the question, how do you lead someone who doesn’t want to follow you? What do you do when you find yourself in the midst of insubordination and rebellion from your team?

Well, you will need to take a step back to gauge the situation in order to help you get past all that. Even in the midst of insubordination, a dysfunctional team can be managed and led all the way to the end.

• Lead by Attentive Listening

First of all, get down to the heart of the matter at hand of what’s causing the noncompliance. Ask what issues they are having with your request and truly listen, then write those things down. Sometimes, they’re not always going to verbally admit the problem due to risk of losing the job, so nonverbally pay attention to what they’re conveying, and whether they are even happy with their job. People don’t just deny following a leader without probable reason, or they want something out of the roles that they are in. Your goal is to find what that is, and then help them meet that longing, and need.

• Lead by Alternative Approaches

Individual expression takes second place to the culture of the business. Make sure that you calibrate your leadership style to those around you. Do not just show up first day at the office and expect everybody to automatically follow your orders. Instead, try to take into account what each individual responds to. If they are adamant against your leadership, then focus first on trivial request with minimum effort on their part and gradually lead up to the actual request.

• Lead by Actionable Examples

To earn the respect of your followers, become the ideal example that is required to move things forward. See yourself through their own eyes and ask, “Would you want to follow your own self as a leader?” If the answer is “No,” ask why even YOU wouldn’t want to follow yourself as a leader because it takes one to know one. Then figure how to reverse engineer all that by focusing on getting better than ever at what you do, and spend a lot of time harnessing the power of your work. The more you do so, the more people will see that you are not solely delegating tasks, but rather, you’re also walking the talk. Become the benchmark example, and people will respect your authority and want to follow you unquestionably.

When you finally find time away from your team, spend it reading and brushing up on what makes a great leader that you can take back to apply to your team for any positive push forward. In time, people will come around in accepting you as their worthy leader.