Thoughts on Leadership and Followership

Followership Role Orientation: Thoughts on Leadership and Followership

On the Followership Role Orientation Scale created by Carsten & Uhi-Bien (2017), I scored a 27, indicating my belief in the need for strong, proactive approaches on the part of followers. I feel particularly strongly that followers should seek to offer their superiors suggestions that the leadership might find valuable. Followers must seek to identify organizational problems as well as carry out the solutions suggested by others. A follower’s eye vantagepoint can be very valuable. Leaders may not see everything going on at the organization.

I scored slightly less high in my conviction about the need to change superiors’ minds. As a follower, I do acknowledge I may lack some of the information and big picture knowledge a superior might have. Also, even superiors may have their hands tied about legal or policy decisions over which they have no control, so I try to channel my energies into changing what I can change versus what I cannot change.

However, Johnson (2021) offers analysis of the followership role that might potentially change my perspective upon followership. Johnson (2021) stresses the need for followers to model high ideals, and superiors may themselves look up to followers. Through eliciting certain moral behaviors and ideals, Johnson (2021) also stresses the need for followers to set the agenda for the organization, as well as leaders. Leaders may have blind spots or simply be ignorant of certain issues. A good example of this is a member of a historically discriminated-against group suggesting an internship program in a disadvantaged community, or a younger employee making suggestions about incorporating environmentalism and green energy into the organization’s vision statement and standard operating processes.

Johnson (2021) also advocates followers steering leaders away from blatantly unethical actions and encouraging leaders through sense-making to stretch their boundaries and to look beyond the current ethical framework of the organization to seek improvement. It is here I think that Johnson (2021) may be overly idealistic in his conceptualization. In some organizations, which actively encourage feedback from followers, this may be feasible. But I believe that the organization must be set up to actively encouraging such input. Not all organizations are this open-minded and some actively discourage followers from having independent notions, especially if there may be some inherent conflict between the follower’s ideals (such as using more recyclables and green energy) and making a profit or following the industry standard. If a follower is too insistent, he or she may be viewed as insubordinate and going beyond the job requirements. A follower should not feel required to put his or her job on the line, unless people’s lives may be at stake and whistleblowing is required.

Sometimes, if a follower finds him or herself working for a genuinely unethical organization, the follower may be better off looking for an organization that better aligns with his or her personal ideals than actively trying to change the organization from within. This is highly dependent upon the organizational culture and the organization’s flexibility. The employee must also take into consideration the unpaid emotional labor which may come in trying to change things.

Although I enjoy offering suggestions and offer input to my supervisors, asking employees to effectively take a leadership role without compensation or a formal title is not a solution, either, to an actual failure of leadership. Followership is vitally important, and can prepare employees for future leadership roles. But it is not, in and of itself, a remedy for poor leadership, and followers should not take the responsibility upon themselves of stepping in to intervene on behalf of hands-off or actively unethical leaders. The leader is still a leader, and leaders are not willing to lead require organizational intervention, not simply the work of one follower, to correct.