Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders

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Conclusion

After reading the text I will consider myself somewhere in the middle. The participant is a category I would consider myself falling under. I tend to favor my boss and organization. I do what I say, and I say what I do. Making an impact most times in an organization, is very important to me. I would like to see myself moving towards an activist are a diehard follower. These are the areas where I feel I could learn to be a better leader and become more engaged in an organization. Once I take on a task, I devote myself to the process of getting it done, so becoming a diehard follower would most likely be easy to accomplish.

Both leadership and followership represent active roles, given the reality that organizational functions require them at every level. Leadership is a process, not a person. Because of the common misconception that it belongs to one person, the prospect of leadership coming from sources other than designated leaders in a hierarchy is still obscured (Hollander, 1992). The role of follower can therefore be seen as holding within it potential for both assessing and taking on leadership functions. As stated by Hollander: leaders do command greater attention and influence, but followers can affect and even constrain leaders' activity in more than passing ways.

Furthermore, qualities sought in good leaders, such as dependability, competence, and honesty, are also included among attributes of good followers (Hollander, 1992). Despite the imbalance of power, influence can be exerted in both roles, as part of a social exchange. Our understanding of leadership is incomplete if we do not recognize its unity with followership (Hollander, 1992).

References

Kellerman, B. (2008). Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing

Leaders. Boston: Harvard Business School.

Kellerman, B. (2007). What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers. Harvard Business

Review,85(12), 84-91.

Hollander, E. P. (1992). The Essential Interdependence of Leadership and Followership. Current

Directions In Psychological Science, 1(2), 71-75. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep11509752