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Followership are the actions of someone in a subordinate role. It may also be considered as particular services that can help the leader, a role within a hierarchical organization, a social construct that is integral to the leadership process, or the behaviors engaged in while interacting with leaders in an effort to meet organizational objectives. [1] As such, followership is best defined as an intentional practice on the part of the subordinate to enhance the synergetic interchange between the follower and the leader.
In organizations, “leadership is not just done by the leader, and followership is not just done by followers.” [2] This perspective suggests that leadership and followership do not operate on one continuum, with one decreasing while the other increases. Rather, each dimension exists as a discrete dimension, albeit with some shared competencies. [3]
The study of followership is an emerging area within the leadership field that helps explain outcomes. Specifically, followers play important individual, relational, and collective roles in organizational failures and successes. [4] [5] [6] “If leaders are to be credited with setting the vision for the department or organization and inspiring followers to action, then followers need to be credited with the work that is required to make the vision a reality.” [7]
The term follower can be used as a personality type, as a position in a hierarchy, as a role, or as a set of traits and behaviors. Studies of followership have produced various theories including trait, behavioral attributes, role, and constructionist theories in addition to exploring myths or misunderstandings about followership.
The relationship between leader/follower is ancient and is referenced throughout history. [8] Examples of leader/follower partnerships are present in the great literatures and wisdom traditions of China such as the I Ching (1000-750 BC), India, and the aboriginal myths of Africa, Australia and the Native Peoples of North and South America. [8] The best known advice from ancient philosophers came from Aristotle who believed, “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a leader.” In his time, Aristotle perceived that followership was necessary, albeit mainly as a precursor to what he considered to be a more important role: leader. [9]
Baldasar Castiglione wrote about followers, following and followership in The Book of the Courtier in 1516. [10] During Japan's Edo or Tokugawa period (1603–1868), the Samurai were a class of followers – the very name samurai meant those who served. [11]
In the modern era, followership research began with Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) who believed that all individuals, regardless of their place in society, deserved respect. She wanted to give more power to individuals and ensure that individuals’ voices were not only heard but were also integrated into solutions. Not only were many of her ideas rejected in the 1930s and 1940s, later theorists also paid limited recognition to her work. Follett's writings have also been underappreciated in contemporary research, despite the fact that her work served as a prelude to many of the developments in the management literature and are still considered timely and insightful by many. [12] Management theorist Warren Bennis said of Follett's work, "Just about everything written today about leadership and organizations comes from Mary Parker Follett's writings and lectures." [13]
Followership research continued in 1955 when Hollander and Webb (1955) argued that leader and follower was not an either/or proposition in which leaders and followers were found at opposite ends of a continuum. They proposed that the qualities associated with leadership and followership were interdependent. [4] Zelaznik published work in 1964 that focused on the leader-follower relationship by considering the dimensions of dominance vs. submissiveness and activity vs. passivity. [14] Followers have been largely neglected in the study of leadership, an omission addressed by Robert Kelley in his seminal 1988 Harvard Business Review article “In Praise of Followers”. [15] Kelley subsequently wrote The Power of Followership (1992), [16] which preceded and influenced Chaleff (1995), Potter, et al. (1996), Thody (2000), Meilinger (2001), Latour and Rast (2004), Kellerman, (2007), Bossily (2007), and Hurwitz & Hurwitz (2015).
In 1994 the W.K. Kellogg Foundation provided a four-year grant to study leadership that attracted 50 practitioners and scholars to “shed light on some of the most compelling topics in the field.” Three focus groups emerged from the Kellogg Leadership Studies Project (KLSP), one being the Leadership and Followership Focus Group. The conveners of this group were Ed Hollander and Lynn Offermann who published a bound collection of papers called The Balance of Leadership & Followership. [17]
The next major organized activity to bring scholars and practitioners together on the subject of followership occurred in 2008 at Claremont University, chaired by Jean Lipman-Blumen of the Peter Drucker and Mastoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, Ron Riggio of the Kravis Leadership Center and Ira Chaleff, author of The Courageous Follower. Participants included researchers and practitioners mentioned in this article including Robert Kelley, Barbara Kellerman and others. In addition to focusing on the elevating aspects of followership, research was introduced on the problematic aspects of followership including the work of Thomas Blass on the famous Stanley Milgram experiments on obedience and by Jean Lipman-Blumen on why we follow toxic leaders. The book of essays by conference contributors, The Art of Followership, was published as part of the Warren Bennis Leadership Series with a foreword by James MacGregor Burns.
Participants in the KLSP went on to form the International Leadership Association (ILA) as a vehicle for keeping the dialogue alive. Similarly, participants in the Claremont conference went on to form the Followership Learning Community within the ILA with Ira Chaleff as its first chair. Both of these entities are continuing with this work.
Additional areas of followership that have been studied include:
Missing from the present research are additional critical components of followership such as the ability to convert strategies into actions that deliver on the actual intent. [14]
Military perspectives behaviors such as: knows themselves and seeks self-improvement, is technically and tactically proficient, complies with orders and initiates appropriate actions in the absence of orders, develops a sense of responsibility and takes responsibility for own actions, makes sound and timely decisions or recommendations, sets the example for others, is familiar with their leader and their job, and anticipates their requirements, keeps leader informed, understands the task and ethically accomplishes it, a team member, not a yes man. [22] The U.S. Army has produced a new military doctrine called mission command that highlights the role of followers. It acknowledges one of Colin Powell's principles of leadership that "the commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proven otherwise." [23] : 448 Mission command doctrine was conceived from a wartime environment that enables followers in the field to act according to the dictates of the situation on the ground, giving them maximum discretion. In order to exercise mission command appropriately, commanders must embrace the principles of followership to succeed. [24]
It is vital to understand that, without effective followers in nursing, our leaders face severe limitations. Current leaders and educators must share and promote the vision of enlightened followership if nursing is to achieve its potential. [25] Research suggests that there is significant difference in organizational effectiveness among nurses with different followership styles – passive, alienated, conformist, pragmatist, or effective. [26]
The appearance of followership in mainstream leadership education books has become more commonplace, including the works of Kouzes & Posner (2012), [27] Jackson & Parry (2011), [28] and Hurwitz & Hurwitz (2015) [29]
Effective followership training in the classroom is challenging because of media messages that preference leadership, internal schemas held by students that ignore followership, and cultural biases against it. Undergraduate and graduate students have been resistant to the idea of followership and followership has been interpreted as leadership poorly enacted or as settling for a lesser position. In recent years, attitudes have begun to change and students have noted that following is an expected, healthy part of a reciprocal relationship in social media and that it did not carry negative connotations. [30]
Although a student's contribution in the classroom has such high significance, the college admissions system has yet to find a way to recognize and reward students who have continuously made these contributions. Given that outstanding classroom contributions have been ignored, yet play such a vital role, it is the responsibility of the college admissions system to find a way to identify them. [31]
Followership, as defined by Hurwitz (2008), is “accepting or enabling [italics original] the goal achievement of one's leader” (p. 11). In the context of franchising, the franchisee could be seen as a follower because he or she accepts the franchisor's business idea and enables the franchisor's goal achievement through the individual franchise operations. [32] Leaders can begin by building organizational value for followers and followership; value is a process of incorporating the concept of followership into the organization's culture, policies, and practices. [33] Because leaders [franchisors] have followers [franchisees] it is their responsibility to set a vision, build trust, and inspire the followers with passion and hope. [34] [35]
In hospitality and tourism, being an effective follower is important for achieving the service-oriented goals of many operations. [36] In hospitality operations it is often important for followers to work independently of their leaders to carry out important tasks. It has been suggested that incorporating followership into training and education in intentional, purposeful ways could assist operations in hospitality and tourism. [36]
The Followership Learning Community (FLC) is a learning community within the International Leadership Organization (ILA) and is “dedicated to the development of knowledge, competencies, and programs concerning the leader-follower relationship. It is the first such academic or practice community devoted to the study of followership. It focuses on research, collaboration, and dissemination of ideas and information”. [37] The current priorities of the FLC are to:
Author | Summary |
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Robert Kelley | According to Kelley, effective followers are individuals who are enthusiastic, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant. Kelley identified two underlying behavioral dimensions that distinguish types of followers. The first behavioral dimension is the degree to which the individual is an independent, critical thinker. The second dimension is the degree to which the individual is active or passive. Depending on where a person falls on these two dimensions, there are five different follower types:
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Ira Chaleff | Chaleff's original model of Courageous Followership proposed four dimensions in which courageous followers operates within a group, and a fifth dimension in which the follower operates either within or outside the group depending on the response of the leadership. The dimensions of courageous followership are:
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Barbara Kellerman | Barbara Kellerman categorized followers as isolates, bystanders, participants, activists, and diehards based on their level of engagement in the leadership process.
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Hurwitz & Hurwitz | The Generative Partnership Model ® comprises five guiding principles, five skill pairings, and an array of associated behaviors. The guiding principles are at the core of every partnership, team, and organization, providing a framework on which the skills are used. The skills come in matched pairs: each of the five skill pairings involves a multitude of associated behaviors. The behaviors could be considered best practice, but are better considered adaptive and adaptable. Hurwitz and Hurwitz described these five skills of good followership:
The five complementary areas of leadership skill are:
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Boas Shamir | Shamir looks at the different types of leader-follower theoretical perspectives rather than developing a specific model of positive followership.
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Coyne & Coyne | Coyne and Coyne (2007) proposed seven desirable followership actions from the perspective of a CEO and his or her direct reports:
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Jimmy Collins | Jimmy L.S. Collins, retired President and COO of Chick-fil-A, an Atlanta, Georgia USA, based Quick Service Restaurant franchise, refers to his philosophy as Creative Followership. He wrote that being a follower is an active role requiring a great deal of creativity, personal initiative, and the ability to execute tasks with excellence. The process begins with identifying a leader worth following. [42] Even so, when Collins’ suggests that people choose their boss, he gives credibility to followers as more than merely people who work for someone. Rather, he proposes that followers have skills, ideas, and energies that complement those of the leader. [43] As a result, a relationship is created in which leaders and followers are able to achieve much more than each individual could have accomplished alone. [44] |
Susan Cain | Susan Cain (2017) states that, “Our elite schools over emphasize leadership partly because they're preparing students for the corporate world, and they assume that this is what businesses need and what leads to personal success. But a discipline in organizational psychology, called “followership” is gaining in popularity.” [45] |
Adam Grant | The most frequent questions he is asked by people is how to contribute when they are not in charge but have suggestions and want to be heard. He calls these “fundamental questions of followership." [45] |
Krista Kleiner | Kleiner proposes that colleges focus on followership skills and contributions. In short, college admission officers need to place less emphasis on students’ acquisition of leadership titles throughout high school and place more emphasis on understanding the domain that has been central to their lives—the classroom learning environment and their contributions to it. [46] If teachers encouraged followership, she posits, they would find ways of improving their classes and also contribute to their students’ becoming both good leaders and followers. By helping students do this, teachers are helping the future working generation of Americans develop skills critical not only to the workplace but to our society as a whole. [46] |
Gordon Curphy, Mark Roellig | The Curphy-Roellig Followership Model builds on some of the earlier research of Hollander, Chaleff, Kellerman and Kelley and consists of two independent dimensions and four followership types. The two dimensions of the Curphy-Roellig model are Critical Thinking and Engagement. Critical thinking is concerned with a follower's ability to challenge the status quo, ask good questions, detect problems, and develop solutions. Engagement is concerned with the level of effort people put forth at work. Based on these two dimensions followers are then categorized into four groups: Slackers (low critical thinking, low engagement), Brown-nosers (low critical thinking, high engagement), Criticizers (high critical thinking, low engagement) and Self-starters (high critical thinking, high engagement). The authors stress a situational nature of the model. [47] |
Theory | Summary |
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Trait | Identifies key traits and their relationship with strong followership. Zaleznik, 1964 (Dominance vs. submissiveness; Activity vs. passivity), Kelley, 1992 (Active engagement; Independent thinking), Chaleff, 1995 (Courage), Potter, et al., 1996 (Relationship initiative; Performance initiative), Kellerman, 2007 (Engagement) [14] |
Behavioral Attribute | Directly lists the behavioral attributes of good followers. [14] Kelley (1988), Hurwitz & Hurwitz (2015) |
Role Based Approaches | Role-based views consider how individuals enact leadership and followership in the context of hierarchical roles. The primary purpose is to advance understanding of how subordinates work with managers in ways that contribute to or detract from leadership and organizational outcomes. [1] |
Constructionism | Investigates how people interact and engage together in social and relational contexts to construct (or not construct) leadership and followership. [48] [1] |
Distributed Leadership & Followership | Distributed leadership starts with the perspective many people can take on a leadership role, not just those with formal power and authority. Leadership and followership can move from person to person as the dialogue twists and turns. [8] Not only are team members challenged to enact followership and leadership roles effectively, but they must be able to switch between the roles. Generally speaking, however, distributed leadership theories focus exclusively on the leadership role. [1] |
Leader-Member Exchange Theory | The focus in LMX theory is on how leaders and followers engage together to generate high quality work relationships that allow them to produce effective leadership outcomes. [49] While LMX theory does acknowledge followers in the relational process, it is still more leadership – than followership – focused in that it privileges the leader as the driver of the relationship-building process. [50] [1] |
Implicit Followership Theories | Follower-centric approaches arose in response to leader-centric views and drew attention to the role of the follower in constructing leaders and leadership. [1] Implicit followership research proposes that leaders’ beliefs for follower behavior influence the extent to which followership is effective; followers who behave as expected will be more successful. They use these schemas to encode followership information, which serves as essential elements of organizational sensemaking. [1] |
Other behavioral traits of effective followership that have been proposed include: a belief in the importance of being a good follower, looks beyond themselves, values their own independence, follows while offering up ideas, self-motivated and self-directed, displays loyalty, considers integrity of paramount importance, functions well in change-oriented environments, functions well on teams, thinks independently and critically, gets involved, generates ideas, willing to collaborate, willing to lead initiatives, develops leaders and themselves, stays current, anticipates, drives own growth, and is a player for all seasons. [14]
The traditional notion that leaders are active and followers are passive is mistaken and contributes to misconceptions about the organizational functions of superiors and subordinates. Behaviorists now recognize that active followers influence leaders at every level of the hierarchy, and that leadership itself is a process, not a person. [51]
There are many myths about followership:
For more misconceptions, see Part 1 (Chapters 2-4) of Embracing Followership: How to Thrive in a Leader-Centric Culture.
Followership theory offers promise for reinvigorating leadership research in rich new ways: [1]
Robert Kelley proposes seven areas for further followership research: [53]
He challenges the field to focus followership research more on “the big issues happening in the world” such as suicide bombers, religious fundamentalism, democratically elected dictators and corporate abuses of power.
Chaleff calls for a similar focus for research on susceptibility to extremism and the use and development of assessments to help people understand their own tendencies in order to pre-empt their expression in the presence of toxic leaders. [54]
Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness, health, and well-being of both individuals and organizations." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "lead", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations.
Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader's main focus is the thriving of their company or organization. A servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people. As stated by its founder, Robert K. Greenleaf, a servant leader should be focused on "Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"
Organizational behavior or organisational behaviour is the "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". Organizational behavioral research can be categorized in at least three ways:
A contingency theory is an organizational theory that claims that there is no best way to organize a corporation, to lead a company, or to make decisions. Instead, the optimal course of action is contingent (dependent) upon the internal and external situation. Contingent leaders are flexible in choosing and adapting to succinct strategies to suit change in situation at a particular period in time in the running of the organization.
Transformational leadership is a theory of leadership where a leader works with teams or followers beyond their immediate self-interests to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through influence, inspiration, and executing the change in tandem with committed members of a group; This change in self-interests elevates the follower's levels of maturity and ideals, as well as their concerns for the achievement. It is an integral part of the Full Range Leadership Model. Transformational leadership is when leader behaviors influence followers and inspire them to perform beyond their perceived capabilities. Transformational leadership inspires people to achieve unexpected or remarkable results. It gives workers autonomy over specific jobs, as well as the authority to make decisions once they have been trained. This induces a positive change in the followers attitudes and the organization as a whole. Transformational leaders typically perform four distinct behaviors, also known as the four Is. These behaviors are inspirational motivation, idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.
A toxic leader is a person who abuses the leader–follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse condition than it was in. Toxic leaders therefore create an environment that may be detrimental to employees, thus lowering overall morale in the organization.
Transactional leadership is a type of leadership style that focuses on the exchange of skills, knowledge, resources, or effort between leaders and their subordinates. This leadership style prioritizes individual interests and extrinsic motivation as means to obtain a desired outcome. It relies on a system of penalties and rewards to achieve short-term goals.
The leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is a relationship-based approach to leadership that focuses on the two-way (dyadic) relationship between leaders and followers.
Stephen Alexander "Alex" Haslam is a professor of psychology and ARC Australian Laureate Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland.
The Tenth Level is a 1976 American made-for-television drama film movie starring William Shatner. Inspired by the Stanley Milgram obedience research, this TV movie chronicles a psychology professor's study to determine why people, such as the Nazis, were willing to "just follow orders" and do horrible things to others. Professor Stephen Turner (Shatner) leads students to believe that they are applying increasingly painful electric shocks to other subjects when they fail to perform a task correctly, and is alarmed to see how much pain the students can be convinced to inflict "in the name of science".
Mark van Vugt is a Dutch evolutionary psychologist who holds a professorship in evolutionary psychology and work and organizational psychology at the VU University Amsterdam. Van Vugt has affiliate positions at the University of Oxford, Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA).
Martin Kilduff is a British academic. He is the Professor of Management and Director of Research at the UCL School of Management.
Mary Parker Follett was an American management consultant, social worker, philosopher and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. Along with Lillian Gilbreth, she was one of two great women management experts in the early days of classical management theory. She has been called the "Mother of Modern Management". Instead of emphasizing industrial and mechanical components, she advocated for what she saw as the far more important human element, regarding people as the most valuable commodity present within any business. She was one of the first theorists to actively write about and explore the role people had in ineffective management and discuss the importance of learning to deal with and promote positive human relations as a fundamental aspect of the industrial sector.
Jean Lipman-Blumen is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Organizational Behavior at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. She is an expert on leadership, achieving styles, crisis management, "hot groups" organizational behavior, gender roles, and toxic leadership. Lipman-Blumen is director and co-founder, with Prof. Richard Ellsworth, of CGU's Institute for Advanced Studies in Leadership. She is president and co-founder, with Harold J. Leavitt, the Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior, at Stanford Graduate School of Business, of the Connective Leadership Institute, a leadership development, research, and management consulting firm, in Pasadena, California.
Trait leadership is defined as integrated patterns of personal characteristics that reflect a range of individual differences and foster consistent leader effectiveness across a variety of group and organizational situations.
Shared leadership is a leadership style that broadly distributes leadership responsibility, such that people within a team and organization lead each other. It has frequently been compared to horizontal leadership, distributed leadership, and collective leadership and is most contrasted with more traditional "vertical" or "hierarchical" leadership that resides predominantly with an individual instead of a group.
Authentic leadership, while having no formal or unequivocal definition, is a growing field in academic research. The idea has also been embraced by leaders and leadership coaches, who view it as an alternative to leaders who emphasize profit and share price over people and ethics. There appears to be some consensus in the literature about the qualities an authentic leader must have. These include self-awareness, the ability to trust one's thoughts, feelings, motives and values, self reflection, responsiveness to feedback, and the ability to resolve conflict in honest and non-manipulative ways. An authentic leader is supposedly able to further the success of an organization within the confines of social and ethical values, even when that seems impossible. Authentic leadership is claimed to be a superior model due to the greater trust and motivation it invokes in subordinates. Much of the evidentiary basis for authentic leadership has been called into question and papers have been retracted.
Distributed leadership is a conceptual and analytical approach to understanding how the work of leadership takes place among the people and in context of a complex organization. Though developed and primarily used in education research, it has since been applied to other domains, including business and even tourism. Rather than focus on characteristics of the individual leader or features of the situation, distributed leadership foregrounds how actors engage in tasks that are "stretched" or distributed across the organization. With theoretical foundations in activity theory and distributed cognition, understanding leadership from a distributed perspective means seeing leadership activities as a situated and social process at the intersection of leaders, followers, and the situation.
Ronit Kark is a full professor of leadership and organizational psychology in the Department of Psychology at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and the founder and former director of the 'Gender in the Field' Graduate Program at the Gender Studies department of Bar-Ilan. She is a distinguished research professor at the University of Exeter Business School and an affiliate scholar at the Center For Gender in Organizations (CGO) at Simmons University, Boston.