Being a Follower
buttons.Why is followership important?
The benefits of good followership
Good followership benefits both followers and leaders in a variety of ways. When followers and leaders are working effectively together this will also have a positive impact on the organisation they work for.
It is clear that leaders and organisations benefit from effective, engaged employees, but there are benefits for the follower too, especially if they have an interest in developing themselves as future leaders.
Benefits for the follower
The typologies covered in the previous section labelled good followers as 'effective', 'proactive' or 'partners'. As leaders increasingly value the partnerships they develop with their followers, followers should also be aware of the potential benefits to them.
Upward influencing
If a follower forms a positive relationship with their leader, they can potentially influence situations where they perceive the leader to be making a mistake or offer additional support if needed. They may also be able to improve circumstances for themselves and colleagues. This is sometimes known as 'managing up'.
Kipnis and Schmidt (1983) identify four strategies of organisational influence that are commonly used when influencing superiors:
- Reason – using data and information to support your requests
- Coalition – mobilising others to support you
- Ingratiation – creating goodwill
- Bargaining – negotiating and exchanging benefits or favours.
It should be noted that these approaches are also used by leaders wishing to influence their followers, i.e. the same skills and attributes, but they are just deployed in a different way.
Activity 2 Influencing up
Think of a time when you've tried to influence someone who was senior to you. What strategy did you use – reason, coalition, ingratiation or bargaining? Was it successful? If it wasn't, might one of the other strategies have worked better? Make notes in the space below:
If you're interested in exploring this topic further, have a look at the Managing your Manager tool in the Toolkit.
This may help you to better understand your boss and their context.
Developing leadership skills
As a follower, you have the opportunity to develop yourself as a leader of the future. This might be through observing the strengths and weaknesses of your leader, or through the support, advice and development opportunities that they give you. Many of the skills and attributes you develop as an effective follower are mirrored in an effective leader, for example:
- courage
- judgement
- communication
- independent thinking
- initiative
- self-awareness and self-management
- commitment
- diplomacy
- collaboration
- influencing.
Agho (2009) collected the perceptions of over 300 senior-level executives on the distinguishing characteristics of effective leaders and followers. Although his findings don't show identical characteristics, he states that 'a significant number of the respondents agreed that followership skills should be viewed as prerequisites for effective leadership'.
Benefits for the organisation
A more engaged and committed workforce is obviously beneficial for the organisation in numerous ways. The work of leaders and managers can become easier and more rewarding, and a range of business enhancements can result.
More effective leadership
A leader with a team that is disengaged and lacking motivation, can find it difficult to complete projects, to innovate, to introduce change etc. Engaged and enthusiastic followers can make a huge difference to achieving goals and moving forward.
Activity 3 What's in it for the leader?
Consider how a strong, engaged, enthusiastic team can benefit their leader, and list your ideas.
A leader must think strategically about the types of followers their organisation needs. For example, you might not always need your followers to be 'effective' or 'proactive'. As Chaleff explains, an 'implementer' might seem to be the perfect follower, but if a leader starts to make mistakes, the 'implementer' is unlikely to challenge them. You might also be working within a context that benefits from passive followers who are happy to abide by the rules, for example, a manufacturing production line.
Employee engagement
Employee engagement is an increasingly popular management concept, focusing on the mutual benefits of a strong relationship between employer and employee.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) lists the benefits of employee engagement as follows:
- Happier, healthier and more fulfilled employees
- Better staff retention
- Improved business performance e.g. increased customer satisfaction levels; productivity; innovation; efficiency
- Increased profit
- Stronger brand and reputation.
You'll consider how to build good followership and an engaged workforce later this week.
In this section, you've seen that the benefits of good followership are numerous – impacting on the follower, the leader and the organisation. However, some organisations are starting to question whether the traditional leader–follower relationship is the most effective approach. You'll explore this idea in more detail in Section 5.