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...…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.

To improve my followership abilities, I first need to improve my overall restraint when interacting with others. Often times, either through hubris or experience, I tend to provide solutions without always encouraging input form others within the team. Here, to better improve my followership skills, I will look to defer and incorporate the opinions of others into my overall decision-making skills. In addition, I will also look to be more collaborative within my work and thought processes. When warranted I will look for insight from leadership…