When I first heard of followership, I immediately rejected the concept. My parents have told me, since birth, that I was a leader. It almost became an excuse for why the other kids didn’t like me or why the other girls my age bullied me: Zoe, you’re just a leader. Not a follower.

In the words of my parents, followers are people who go with the pack. The people who take drugs and succumb to peer pressure. Followers are the answer to the question if so and so jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge too? 

However, as I read the article in the Ivey Business Journal, I concluded that Followership is not behind or beneath leadership. I believe it is leadership adjacent. As I read further, I recognized myself in the characteristics listed.

McCallum outlined eight qualities of a good follower, and begrudgingly, I acknowledged that I possessed some of those characteristics.

Judgement.  Followers must take direction but they have an underlying obligation to the enterprise to do so only when the direction is ethical and proper.  The key is having the judgement to know the difference between a directive that your leader gives on how to proceed that you do not agree with and a directive that is truly wrong.

As I previously mentioned, my parents stressed good judgment from a young age. We were given the freedom to make our own decisions, but they tried to teach us right and wrong. I believe I have good judgment and a moral code to which I adhere.

Work ethic.  Good followers are good workers.  They are diligent, motivated, committed, pay attention to detail and make the effort.  Leaders have a responsibility to create an environment that permits these qualities but regardless, it is the responsibility of the follower to be a good worker.  There is no such thing as a bad worker who is a good follower.

I work hard, and I do excellent work. I strive to do my best on the smallest of tasks, and I never intentionally do less than my best on a project.

Competence.  The follower cannot follow properly unless competent at the task that is directed by the leader.  It is the obligation of the leader to assure that followers are competent.  Sometimes things go wrong because the follower is not competent at the task at hand.  When this happens, leaders should blame themselves, not the follower.  A sign of poor leadership is blaming followers for not having skills they do not have.

As my mother says, my core competency is competency. I am very vocal that I am the wrong person for a task if I am not competent at it. If I am adhering to the principles of Followership, then I am only making it easier for a leader to find a task that I am competent in.

Honesty.  The follower owes the leader an honest and forthright assessment of what the leader is trying to achieve and how.  This is especially the case when the follower feels the leader’s agenda is seriously flawed.  Respect and politeness are important but that said, it is not acceptable for followers to sit on their hands while an inept leader drives the proverbial bus over the cliff.  Good leaders are grateful for constructive feedback from their team.  Bad leaders do not welcome feedback and here followers have to tread carefully.  If the situation is serious enough, consideration should be given to going above the leader in question for guidance.

I am honest; sometimes brutally so. I have no issue telling someone they are wrong or if I disagree with what they say. I value honesty and feedback, and therefore, I will not refrain or bite my tongue for the sake of politeness. Sometimes, that gets me in trouble, but as Representative John Lewis says, there is such a thing as good trouble.

Courage.  Followers need to be honest with those who lead them.  They also need the courage to be honest.  It takes real courage to confront a leader about concerns with the leader’s agenda or worse, the leader himself or herself.  It is not for naught that Churchill called courage “The foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend”.  From time to time, it takes real courage to be a good follower.

“There are all kinds of courage,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I, therefore, award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom.”

I can be honest even when the situation gets tough. I am not afraid to speak my mind if someone is wrong. Courage is a virtue, as is honesty, and the two go hand in hand. If courage and honesty make me a good follower, then so be it.

Discretion.  A favorite saying in World War II was “Loose lips sink ships.”  Sports teams are fond of the expression “What you hear here, let it stay here.”  Followers owe their enterprises and their leaders discretion.  Talking about work matters inappropriately is at best unhelpful and more likely harmful.  Discretion just means keeping your mouth shut.  It should be easy but many find it next to impossible.  Bluntly, you cannot be a good follower and be indiscreet.  Everybody who works at an enterprise has a duty of care; indiscretion is not care, it is careless.

My dad sometimes says, “this stays in the family.” That means there’s some important business or secret that he had to tell me, but I wasn’t allowed to tell my friends. My friends know me as someone who can keep a secret. However, I am not the kind of person who keeps secrets that can harm others. Lately, in the media, whistleblowers have been making waves for breaking confidentiality and revealing the horrible things their corporations do. Discretion, to some extent, can be valuable. But here I disagree with McCallum: free-thinking, honesty, and bravery are more important than discretion.

Loyalty.  Good followers respect their obligation to be loyal to their enterprise.  Loyalty to the enterprise and its goals is particularly important when there are problems, interpersonal or otherwise, with a particular leader.  Followers who are not loyal are inevitably a source of difficulty.  They create problems between team members; they compromise the achievement of goals; they waste everybody’s time; they are a menace.  Loyalty is not a synonym for lapdog.  Rather, its essence is a strong allegiance and commitment to what the organization is trying to do.  Followers should remember that their obligation is to the enterprise, not a given leader at a given point in time.

I am loyal, often to a fault. Sometimes nonsensically, in the case of brand loyalty. I have never seen myself as a ‘lapdog’ for my loyalty. Instead, I have seen it as one of my greatest strengths. I am loyal to my friends. I am loyal to my family. I am loyal to my school. I am loyal to my sports teams– Go Pens! If I join an organization, it is because I have placed my trust and respect in that organization, and I will be loyal to them unless they wrong me.

Ego management.  Good followers have their egos under control.  They are team players in the fullest sense of the concept.  They have good interpersonal skills.  Success for good followers relates to performance and goal achievement, not personal recognition and self-promotion.  Sounds too good to be true and often it is.  It is difficult but the best organizations tie advancement and reward to performance and goal achievement as hard as that may be to do.

I often have trouble keeping my ego in check, and that is a personal problem that I have been working on for a very long time. I need to learn to derive my achievement from reaching my goals and acknowledging my own hard work, not from the recognition and approval of others. If I can strive towards ego management, I think it will not only make me a better follower but a better leader.

In conclusion, I still don’t 100% agree with the principles of followership. While reading the article, I found myself aligning more with the managers in the situation than the worker. However, unless I become the head of an organization (which I strive towards) I will always be managed. Until then, I think I can be an excellent leader by acknowledging the qualities of a good follower.

After deciding to invite pirates and philosophers alike to my salon, I decided it was integral to the evening to discuss the topics of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, as well as Democracy, Human Nature, and Authority. While Kant, Locke, and Rousseau discussed their beliefs on the matter, the Pirate guests would offer their input as to best actualize the philosopher’s theories, as Pirates put ideas into action.

Finally, I was tasked with putting my salon online in digital format, so that it was easily accessible to not only those in my class, but to anyone who is interested in Enlightenment history, or Golden Age Piracy. The Agnes Scott College History Department loves digital history and this project correlates with the Summit curriculum and the development of our digital portfolios. Below is my methodology for my project, and a link to view the final website!

Introduction

As a Digital and Visual Literacy tutor, I knew that I had not only the training but the resources to create an engaging and dynamic digital salon. That, coupled with my love of Enlightenment history and my interest in piracy, I threw myself into my research and creation of, what I believe, is my most comprehensive and well-designed website to date.

The Frontispiece (Home Page)

I spent a lot of time working on the frontispiece, or home page, of my digital salon. As the landing page of my subdomain, I wanted to make sure it was eye-catching, informative, and provided suitable navigation for the rest of my website. I wanted to include the quote that formed my thesis, the Yoke of Nonage quote from Immanuel Kant. That, contrasted with the image of Blackbeard directing two men underneath a yoke, provide a direct correlation between the Enlightenment and Piracy that I continue throughout my website.
I first selected my template because it allowed for video as a header. The first piece of media created for my digital salon was the header video, which shows images of the Golden Age of Piracy with an overlay of a waving black sail. All photos, including the pictures in the video, were either from Wikimedia Commons or sources otherwise.

As the reader scrolls through the Frontispiece, the reader comes to a series of text boxes that link to three critical areas of research, the thesis, evidence, and analysis that make up the backbone of the website. The images included in the text boxes are ornamentations from Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates. As this text formulated much of my research, I wanted to include the beautiful ornamentation that I had come to know and love in my readings.

The reader then comes to a miniature “about” section, preceding the more in-depth separate page with navigational links. These sections allow the reader to quickly learn about the class, as well as the creator of the site. If the reader clicks on the links, they go to my digital portfolio or the Agnes Scott History Department website. These links allow the website to function not only as a research project but as an advertisement for Agnes Scott and myself as a content creator. Throughout the Frontispiece, as the website logo and icon, I have an image of the Jolly Roger, Calico Jack Rackham’s flag and the most enduring symbol of the Golden Age of Piracy.

About the Project (About Page and Scope)

I chose to include a page introducing the history of the salon, as well as the purpose of the digital salon. The project is not typical, and therefore, the average reader might not understand the reasoning behind the project. I further chose to include the methodology essay, albeit differently formatted, on the about page, so it is readily available to my classmates and the reader.

The page that introduces the scope of my project is when the research behind The Enlightened Pirate is introduced. I begin the page with a quote from noted pirate historian, Phillip Gosse. It was impossible to research the entirety of the Enlightenment, the Golden Age of Piracy, or the connections between them. As I explain on the page, I chose to narrow the research scope for the project based on coursework, primary source documents, secondary source research, as well as geographic range. I also included an image of an engraving from the 1772 edition of Encyclopedie, again, via Wikimedia Commons. After defining the scope of research, I was able to write my thesis and begin researching The Enlightened Pirate.

Research (Thesis, Analysis, and Evidence)

My thesis, as presented on the thesis page, went through several revisions. I wanted to create a thesis that adequately stated what I was attempting to argue but also provided sufficient information for someone casually reading the project. I chose to accentuate the thesis page with a quote found in a valuable secondary source, Bandits at Sea: a Pirates Reader, that informed my research but did not directly make it into any analysis. I also chose to include one of the more complete images we have from A General History of the Pyrates, an engraving by Benjamin Cole that depicts Bartholomew Roberts, and his flag.

Next, I have a category of posts that summarize my research, or, what would be my essay, if this was a traditional research essay. I wrote six posts, three about piracy and the enlightenment, and three about enlightenment philosophers, to best examine the evidence and argue my thesis. I chose to outline the philosophy of the Enlightenment philosophes attending my salon, that is, John Locke and the Right of Rebellion, Immanuel Kant and the Yoke of Nonage, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and The Social Contract. I then chose to synthesize my argument in three short essays; Enlightened Pirate Democracies; Piracy, Human Nature, and Autonomy; and Freedom, Liberty, Equality, and Pirates. Each post contains links to direct evidence, as located further on the website, as well as footnotes.

I also chose to create images for each post, by combining an image of Enlightenment art, or a portrait of an Enlightenment philosopher, with an overlay of a pirate flag, in the same motif and design style of the video header.

Like the categorical organization of my analysis, I chose to organize primary source evidence in one category, with each piece of evidence having its own post. This system allowed for an efficient tagging and categorizing and allowed me to link back to direct evidence with ease. While I did not upload every piece of evidence utilized, I thought that uploading the primary sources that I found showcased my research abilities.

The Salon

While the Salon page precedes my scope and research on the toolbar, as it was the most in-depth page, I decided to leave it to last in my methodological essay. On this page, I showcase the guests of the salon; with the guests being three Enlightenment philosophers and six pirates. For each guest, I show a portrait, and give a brief biography, alongside essential arguments or accomplishments. For the Philosophers, I link to the posts that further outline their arguments.

I chose Kant, Rousseau, and Locke as guests for my salon because of the similarities in their arguments about autonomy, the human condition, and social contract theory. While each offers a different argument, and in Locke’s case, one that precedes the other two by a century, all of the philosophers chosen created a cohesive base argument for my research.

In regards to pirate guests, I chose the most famous, most successful, and most notorious. This was difficult, and I had to leave out many notable pirates (Edward England, Emmanuel Wynn, Henry Every, Mary Read) to create a concise guest list. I also chose pirates based on the availability of primary and secondary sources on their lives. For instance, while Mary Read may have been more ruthless than Anne Bonny, I chose to showcase Anne Bonny because there were more resources about her life and her actions.

Beneath the guests of the salon, I included one of the most famous images of the salon era, Madame Geoffrin’s Salon, painted by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier in 1812, again with the imagery of the pirate flag. The text is what would have been my conclusion if this were a traditional research essay. It summarizes the topics discussed at the salon and leaves the reader thought-provoked and interested in learning more.

Biography and Links

The bibliography is separated into primary and secondary sources, just as they would be in a research essay. To keep the dynamics of the rest of the website, I decided to consolidate the bibliography into a file-like widget, which allows the reader to view the full citation of a work, only if they wish. I think this allows the page to be less cluttered, and it also is pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.

Finally, I included a link to my digital portfolio and the Agnes Scott College website, to continue to promote my work and the college.

I really enjoyed creating my digital salon, and I am incredibly proud of my work. I hope you enjoy looking at it and learning more about the Enlightened Pirate!

View The Enlightened Pirate here!