The importance of a good leader cannot be denied; however, followers play an equally important role in the success of any project, group, or organization. There can be no leaders without followers, but most research to date has focused on leadership. Researchers have only recently given serious consideration to the topics of followers and followership.

PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 9.1

Ping Fu is the Chinese-born cofounder and former CEO of Geomagic, a company that provides 3D imaging used in engineering, art, archeology, metrology, and biomechanical product design. Geomagic's technology is used in the creation of customized prosthetic limbs, and if you wore braces growing up, they may have been designed with the help of Geomagic technology.

Ping Fu's journey to becoming a corporate CEO is far from typical. She grew up in Shanghai in the home of two well-educated parents. At the age of eight she was listed as a "black" citizensomeone who had to atone for the greed and corruption committed by her parents and ancestors when Mao's cultural revolution swept the country. She spent the next years separated from her parents, working 14-hour days in a factory, foraging for scraps, and tending to her little sister between shifts. When the Cultural Revolution ended, she enrolled in school and eventually wrote her dissertation on China's one-child policy, where she found that the government's use of brutal enforcement techniques was causing shockingly high rates of infanticide. Her dissertation was leaked to the press, and its wide publication was a major embarrassment to the Chinese government. In 1984 China quietly deported Ping Fu to the United States.

Ping Fu learned English and computer programming while working as a babysitter, maid, and waitress. She eventually landed a job with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where she worked on earthquake prediction modeling and 3D imaging. In 1997 she made a New Year's resolution to "create something of value" and left the NCSA to start up Geomagic. In early 2013 she sold the company to 3D Systems, a 3D printing company, for $55 million.

Sources: P. Fu, Bend, Not Break (New York: Penguin Group, 2012); "An Executive Memoir: The World Is 3D," The Economist, January 12, 2013, p. 72; and M. Kirkpatrick, "The Art of Resilience," The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2013, p. A11.

Questions:

1. What theory or theories of motivation best explain Ping Fu's journey to CEO?
2. What is your own view of what motivates people to work hard and perform well?
3. Do you know of any cases in which reward systems are inconsistent with desired behavior? How are personal values related to rewards?