Leadership & Followership

Becoming a Better Follower: The Employee’s Responsibility

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While there are a number of things that leadersOpens in new window and their organizations should be responsible for in developing better followers; employees at all levels must take equal responsibility for becoming better followers.

Two scholars have developed a four-step process for followers to use in managing the leader-follower relationship.

1. It is critical to understand your boss. You should attempt to gain an appreciation for your leader’s leadership style, interpersonal style, goals, expectations, pressures, and strengths and weaknesses. One way of doing this is to ask your leader to answer the following seven questions.

2. You need to understand your own styleOpens in new window, needs, expectations, and strengths and weaknesses.
3. Conduct a gap analysisOpens in new window between the understanding you have about your leader and the understanding you have about yourself. With this information in mind, you are ready to proceed to the final step of developing and maintaining a relationship that fits both parties’ needs and styles.
4. Build on mutual strengths and adjust or accommodate the leader’s divergent style, goals, expectations, and weaknesses. For example, you might adjust your style of communication in response to your leader’s preferred method of receiving information.
   
   Other adjustments might be made in terms of decision-making. If the leader prefers a participative approach, then you should attempt to involve your leader in all decisions regardless of your decision-making style.

Two additional suggestions on being a successful follower or employee in an organization are:

Recognize Conflict

The fact is, sometimes a follower or direct report may not be able to accommodate a leader’s style, expectations, or perhaps weaknesses, and may have to seek a transfer or quit to reconcile the discrepancy. The reality is that there are personal and ethical trade-offs that one may not be willing to make when managing the leader-follower relationship.

Enhance Success

Finally, followers should recognize the importance of working at being a good follower, when that is their role.

Everyone can enhance their leader’s leadership effectiveness and their organization’s success by becoming better followers, and thus create their own success. It is in a follower’s best interest to be a good follower because leaders need and want competent employees.

Conclusion

In bringing this leader-follower relationship series to a close, it is important to recognize that a follower is a role and not necessarily an individual. It is often the case that an employee who excels at followership is also an excellent leader.

Identifying and cultivating followers is just as important as developing strong leaders and followers. Effective leaders can best serve their organizations by modeling the followership behavior they expect from others.

The important role of followership in organizations is increasingly recognized. People are followers more often than leaders, and effective leaders and followers share similar characteristics.

A leader’s effectiveness can be increased by applying power and influence Opens in new window. This begins by understanding the five bases of powerOpens in new window and how to best use power effectively.

In addition, leaders should recognize common influence tacticsOpens in new window that can be effectively used in different situations.

An effective follower is both independent and active in the organization. Effective followership is not always easy. Effective followers display the courage to assume responsibilities, to challenge their leaders, to participate in transformation, to serve others, and to be a resource, helping the leader be a good leader, building a relationship with the leader, and viewing the leader realistically.

Leaders want followers who are positive and self-motivated, who take action to get things done, who accept responsibility, and who excel at required tasks.

Followers want their leaders to be honest and competent. Followers need feedback that is timely and specific, focuses on performance rather than the person, and focuses on the future rather than dragging up mistakes of the past.

Organizations have a responsibility to focus as much attention on followership skills as they do on leadership skills. This means that organizations must invest in developing followership skills that should become a part of the culture of “the ways things are done” in the organization. Followers have equal responsibility in learning as much as they can on how to become a better follower.