Penn state university scandal organizational behavior

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FOLLOWERSHIP

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You cannot have leaders without followers. In the previous chapter, Adaptive Leadership (Chapter 10), we

focused on the efforts of leaders in relation to the work of followers in different contexts. The emphasis was

on how leaders engage people to do adaptive work. In this chapter, we will focus primarily on followers and

the central role followers play in the leadership process. The process of leading requires the process of

following. Leaders and followers together create the leadership relationship and without an understanding of

the process of following, our understanding of leadership is incomplete (Shamir, 2007; Uhl-Bien, Riggio,

Lowe, and Carsten, 2014).

For many people, being a follower and the process of followership has negative connotations. One reason is

that people do not find followership as compelling as leadership. Leaders, rather than followers, have always

taken center stage. For example, in school, children are taught early that it is better to be leader than a follower.

In athletics and sports, the praise for performance consistently goes to the leaders, not the team players. When

people apply for jobs, they are asked to describe their leadership abilities, not their followership activities.

Clearly, it is leadership skills that are applauded by society, not followership skills. It is just simply more

intriguing to talk about how leaders use power than to talk about how followers respond to power.

While the interest in examining the active role of followers was first approached in the 1930s by Follett (1949),

groundwork on follower research wasn’t established until several decades later through the initial works of

scholars such as Zaleznik (1965), Kelley (1985), Meindl (1990), and Chaleff (1995). Still, until recently, only

a minimal number of studies have been published on followership. Traditionally, leadership research has

focused on leaders’ traits, roles, and behaviors because leaders are viewed as the causal agents for

organizational change. At the same time, the impact of followers on organizational outcomes has not been

generally addressed. Researchers often conceptualize leadership as a leader-centric process, emphasizing the

role of the leader rather than the role of the follower. Furthermore, little research has conceptualized

leadership as a shared process involving the interdependence between leaders and followers in a shared

relationship. Even though followers share in the overall leadership process, the nature of their role has not

been scrutinized. In effect, followership has rarely been studied as a central variable in the leadership process.

There are indications that this is beginning to change. In a recent New York Times article, Susan Cain (author

of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking) decries the glorification of leadership

skills in college admissions and curricula and argues that the world needs more followers. It needs team

players, people called to service, and individuals committed to something outside of themselves. Followership

is also receiving more attention now because of three major works devoted exclusively to the process of

following: The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great leaders and Organizations by Riggio,