Leadership and Followership

In followership there needs to be a leader that inspires and bonds followers together as a unit moving in one direction. Today’s leader has to be more than someone that was placed in a position of authority, a person with a title and a higher salary level. A real leader is found when the behaviors and attitudes of their

Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.

Many times in life, we are convinced that leaders rise from the ground, pulling the rest of us up to meet them. Followers are portrayed as decorations to help enhance the leader. The relationship between them, however, is more closely resembling a tower. Followers support and build up to a major cause with the leader at the top, the figurehead of their ideals. The ideal leader is the ideal follower, which helps to portray outwards the qualities they're looking for and the goals they have. The difficulty arises when today's society raises everyone to believe that they must be a leader or they're a loser. As Reese Bobby in Talladega Nights said, "If you're not first, you're last." During my time on the girl's golf team, I was in no way the best

Effective followership is an essential component of effective leadership in that, without good followers, the leader’s work is difficult and cumbersome. The role of the follower is many times understated. As illustrated by Kelley (1998), “effective followers are thinkers; energetic and assertive, self-starters, independent problem solvers, and carry out their tasks with these characteristics (p. 143). Effective followers also are characterized by their ability to perform tasks with little supervision, their intelligence, and ability to think for themselves. We are all followers, even those who consider themselves leaders; so to encourage this effectiveness in others; we must be role models for those under us, so that they may also be effective at following. Chaleff (2009) observed that “all important social accomplishments require complex

Followers help leaders manifest their vision. Successful followers (supporters or team members) come in a wide variety of personal characteristics. There are people who may be good followers who do not make good leaders or even want to be leaders, but there are no good leaders who are not good followers. A good leader was once a follower. Without followers there is no leadership in any organization. Leaders can develop effective followers as followers develop effective leaders. The performance of followers and leaders of an organization are variables that depend on one another. Both roles are proactive together they can

Leadership is a process of influencing activities of a particular group of people with the aim of attaining certain stipulated goals. In defining leadership there is need to consider a particular group, the common goals and the duties that are allocated to specific members of the group depending on their abilities (Fiedler 1976). Leadership therefore cannot successfully occur unless members of the group are given different considerations in terms of personality, traits and responsibilities. In considering leadership, it is important to look at the leader, the group or organization they are leading, the members as individuals and the situation; these are

(Kouzes & Posner p. 26) The foundation of leadership is credibility, lack of credibility leads to little or no followers. Credibility makes a huge difference; as per Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership: “If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.” (Kouzes & Posner p. 41) “To willingly follow them, people must believe that the leaders’ word can be trusted, that they are personally passionate and enthusiastic about their work, and that they have the knowledge and skill to lead.” (Kouzes & Posner p.

1. When discussing leadership and followership, there is often a split in personal opinion when it comes to which one is more important. Leadership and followership both offer unique benefits in their own right and have supporting factors, which give them the perceived appearance of being more important. The focus for this paper will be to advocate the importance of followership over that of leadership. This will be accomplished by addressing the pros of followership to include some core skills of followership and the effects followership has on the development of a leader. The expectation of an officer however, places a high amount of emphasis on leadership more so than that of followership. Given this perceived importance of leadership as an officer, an effective leadership style will be explained and how officers develop this particular leadership style. While leadership has a distinct presence within the professional work environment, followership is considered the underlying backbone in developing an effective high performing team.

The notion of character is ubiquitous throughout the literature as a main leadership trait of a good university or college president. However, Hernon and Rossiter (2007) contend such superficial traits as charisma or charm often are mistaken for leadership. Ultimately, charisma is “ephemeral” (p. 72). The more important character traits include efficacy, caring, innovation, and influence, as well as the ability to effect change within the institution itself and the broader society. While charisma and outward charm may indeed be short-lived, especially in the absence of the more important traits, the literature does show that taste, appearance, and image still rank high on various lists of desired presidential qualities (Bowles, 2013; Goff, 2003).

As a good follower, I need to accept responsibility and I need to be aware of the tasks that I have to take on. I have to readily support my leader at all times and I should be able to voice my opinions to my leader in a very supportive way. Leaders can only lead an organization successfully if they have personalities that appeal to their followers. The individual reflection and big five

Leadership has become overly romanticized by popular culture, leaving little research and attention to followership (Meindl). This focus on leadership has left a deficit in the development of

Over the years, a great deal of time, and research has been dedicate to the study of leadership. Even with extensive data on the topic, many still disagree on what leadership really means. Hence, leadership is a word that has many different meanings and different researched theories associated with it. On a basic level, leadership involves having and establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with followers, respecting followers, and leading an organization with excellence while ensuring that everyone is part of the team. Leadership is also a method by which a leader uses his or her influence towards getting a group of followers to take ownership or buy into a vision.

In his paper, Messick analyzes leadership by focusing on the relationship between leaders and followers. Messick postulates that followers chose to be led because doing so provides them certain benefits. In choosing to be led, the followers act in ways beneficial to the leader. Thus leaders and followers are linked together in a symbiotic psychological relationship by exchanging benefits. Messick identifies five dimensions along which this exchange

Chapter one portrays the importance on followers and provides some insight and labels different types of followers. Riggio et al (2008), provides examples on the various styles of individuals as followers, for instance, the sheep, the yes-people, the alienated, the pragmatics, and the star followers. Furthermore, these classes of followers provide a better understanding to leaders on why one performs in an organization.

According to Howell, “without followers, there are plainly no leaders or leadership” (2006). Furthermore, followers are more important because if they do not follow, there is not leader (Howell, 2006). Howell mentioned that in order to understand the process of leadership it is important to explore the behavior of the followers (2006). He also added that in many followers perception a charismatic leader has a “heroic” personality and capable to persuade followers in a group or organization(Howell, 2006).The followers believe that their leader has power and ability or think him or her mighty (Howell, 2006). While this is exaggeration in the perception and this can also lead in a very different and wrong path. If a leader’s vision is negative, than the followers will follow without any questions and their actions can have worst consequences on followers (Conger,