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Leadership : Leadership And Followership

Decent Essays

Leadership and followership are two sides of the same coin. However, one of these topics is more closely studied than the other. Leadership is studied in the halls of famous universities and discussed in various books and articles. Many of these discussions involve the same question; what makes a good leader? The question to this answer is both the cause, and the product, of excellent leadership, good followers. What a leader strives to create in the company can only be completed by a force of followers with the ability to realize the leader 's vision. So instead of asking what makes a good leader, it must first be asked what makes a good follower. As leadership and followership mirror one another, looking at the parallels between the two may help to answer this question. Leaders are meant to lead teams in an ethical manner in order to realize a vision for the company. Therefore, in order to support the leader, followers must be able to work in a team and help actualize the leader 's vision in an ethical manner.

As the leaders develop their grand ideas, it is the followers who actualize them, therefore it is necessary that effective followers have a conceptual understanding of their business (Antelo, 2010). They must be able to do the job. A welder would not expect a career ballerina to run a welding torch and a ballerina would never expect a welder to complete a pas de deux. A good follower must understand what they are doing. This is the foundation of a follower 's work.

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