How followership can improve organizational outcomes

1. Do your leaders believe that you are a valuable member of the team? Are you actively engaged in the goals of your leader and the organization, and do you seek to provide usefulness to your work unit?

Within a public safety work environment, I do believe that I am a valuable member of my team. For one followership is required to help maintain corporate culture within an often times stressful environment. This is particularly true as a public servant, as organization and structure are needed to help properly serve others efficiently. Followership therefore not only impacts the organization, but the constituents the organization serves. As a member of my team, a part of my value comes from maintaining a culture of positivity and innovation within the team setting. Here, I often challenge existing processes to make them more efficient or to significantly reduce errors. Specially, these process improvements come in the form of administrative processes that can of the become bureaucratic and cumbersome. Through followership, I have identified leadership objectives of improving efficiencies and directed my efforts into properly doing so. I also look to engage my team members constantly for their feedback within group settings. This concept has been exacerbated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic which saw in-person interactions decline materially. Here, I needed to maintain communication with team members while also helping to maintain the overall culture of the company and the team. This included ensuring that team members followed leadership directed mask mandates while also complying with CDC guidelines (Bjugstad, 2006).

Within an online only work environment, it is particularly difficult to transfer corporate values to new hires within the company. As a valued member of the team, I have helped to properly onboard new hires, which was in direct alignment with leadership goals and directives. This followership behavior also indirectly improved my overall communication and leadership skills.

2. Do you actively display behaviors that show your commitment to the organization? Regardless of your personal views or self-interest, do you provide the same level of support and commitment towards organizational goals that you would expect from your own followers?

My commitment to the organization is displayed through my ability to not only work longer and harder to achieve corporate objectives, but also from my ability to encourage others to do the same. I do provide the same level of support and commitment toward organization goals as I would expect from my followers. This is based on the theory of servant leadership, where a leaders mimics and displays what he or she would want their followers to exhibit. Through the theory of servant leadership, I don’t ask anything from my followers that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself. I also communicate heavily with my team members to ensure that we are all in alignment with corporate objectives. This is a particularly powerful tool as it relates to working with community members and other constituents the organization is directed to serve.

3. Are you able to transition from a leadership role to a followership role with ease, and with an equal amount of enthusiasm for both roles?

No, this is a very difficult task for me to accomplish as it requires a complete change in behaviors and responsibilities. Within a followership role, you are beholden to your specific objective as provided by the leader. The primary objective is to follow the leaders direction and exceed their overall direction through quality work and alignment of interests. However, in a leadership role, you are much more involved in the oversight of the activities of other followers. As a result, switching between the two can be difficult as behaviors that work in a leadership role may not translate adequately to a followership role. For example, in a followership role, I often find myself micro managing the efforts and behaviors of other peers on my team as though I was operating in a leadership role. Here, I must do a better job of recognizing my role with the leadership capacity or the followership capacity (Crossman, 2011).

4. Do you believe that you have to be a good follower before you can be a good leader? Do you recognize that by actively seeking to improve your followership skills, you are also improving your ability as a leader?

Yes, you must be a good follower to be a good leader. In particularly, being a follower often provides individuals with the emotional intelligence required to be a good leader. For example, by being a follower, you acquire a much more intimate knowledge of what peers feel about the leader and how it impacts their overall engagement and work product. These insights can then be leveraged in the future to improve overall team dynamics and outcomes. Being a follower also provides experience with minor nuances that can ultimately help improve the overall leadership capabilities of the individual later on.

5. How do you assess your followership abilities? What can you do to develop your followership skills?

Overall, I believe my followership skills can continually improve. Here, I continue to strive to improve my followership skills particularly within my capacity as a public servant. When reviewing my followership skills, one critical trait that I possess is a willingness to learn form others. Here, I am willing to continually learn methods in which to improve my followship skills to be of better service to my team and to my community at large.