Good Followers Are Important Than A Good Leader

2. Followership should be viewed as an active skill that must be developed in order to be considered an effective follower. According to the Air and Space Power Journal (Winter 2004), followership is considered a discipline that when viewed from a professional perspective is considered both an art and a science, requiring a balance between the development of skills and the understanding of followership roles within a professional

Kellerman, B. (2008). Followership How followers are creating change and changing leaders. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press

The current context of work, leadership, and followership is positioned in progressively multifaceted, uncertain, and dynamic business backgrounds with multiple realities founded upon various values, priorities, and requirements. The actual encounters demanded by globalization, amplified competition, far-reaching sociocultural and technological growths, and the acceleration of changes that are conveying new intricacies for organizations (Küpers, 2007).

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

(MindTools.com). Followers are involved in all of the operational and decision-making processes. Respect, motivation, positive attitude and serving are the main values of servant leaders.

Followership can be defined as the willingness to follow a leader, to work effectively as a team member, and exhibit loyalty to the leaders. Cadets exhibiting followership should not be afraid to ask for help from their leaders in order to improve themselves. When a follower feels the need to voice differences of opinions, it should be done so respectively.

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

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

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze available followership literature to identify established and acceptable definitions and attributes of followership. The idea and theory of followership has been around for centuries. Aristotle once said, “Who would learn to lead must, as men say, first of all learn to obey” (Aristotle, 1895). Since the mid-1900s researchers conducted specific studies on followership, beginning with E. P. Hollander and Wilse Webb’s study “Leadership, Followership, and Friendship: An Analysis of Peer Nominations” where they assess the validity of peer nominations (1953). Interest in the study of followership increased in the 1980s and 90s. However, followership became an independent field when Robert Kelly and Ira Chaleff each published books with followership in their titles (Crossman & Crossman, 2011). Kelly’s The Power of Followership: How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and Followers Who Lead Themselves and Chaleff’s The Courageous Follower: Standing up to and for our Leaders are foundational works inspiring practically every subsequent study. From here followership literature can be categorized into two defining groups descriptive, studies that identify actual behaviors, and prescriptive, studies that identify ideal behaviors (Crossman & Crossman, 2011). This research combines both descriptive and prescriptive descriptions of followership and arrays them along Jon Howell and Dan Costley’s

Being a follower does not seem ideal in an Army in dire need of good leaders. Becoming a good leader requires you to establish a foundation to build your leadership skills. Dictionary.com

The concept of followership has existed for decades, but only in relatively recent times has the idea received more attention. The dictionary definition of the word followership is “the capacity or willingness to support a leader”.

Just as it’s important to learn how to lead others, it’s also incredibly important that players learn how to be lead by others. Being a follower gave me a chance to experience outside of my box. When I initiated my soccer career, my life as a follower had begun.

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.

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

To have great leadership, there needs to be a leader-follower relationship. The relationship can’t be effective without inspiration, involvement, and support from both participants. To develop this alliance, the leader must give extra effort to reach out to followers. The only way a leader can be successful is if the follower trusts the leader. The most important characteristic of a leader is to set a good example for their followers.