Followership

 

And they slight the role of followers who closely mold the behavior of leaders.  To be sure, historians and journalists are now searching the records for evidence of the motives and feelings of “ordinary” men and women, as Studs Terkel has done, taping the testimony of contemporaries about their work, their concerns, their setbacks, and their dreams.  But we must know much more about the hitherto nameless persons who comprise the followers of leaders if we are to develop adequate understanding of the reciprocal relationship.  [emphasis original] (Burns, 1978, p. 61.)

 

 

Followership is appearing more frequently in the popular press, which is significant because it indicates that the concept is being broadly introduced and perhaps accepted in business circles.   Most often, these articles appear as attempts to educate the workforce, both supervisor and supervisee, by listing a set of traits or behaviors.  Solovy (2005), for example, uses (without citation) Kelley’s (1988) traits of credibility, honesty, and courage, as well as Kelley’s overall framework that followership is essential to leadership success.  Musselwhite (2006) creates an arbitrary list of behaviors that just as easily might be about leadership or moral education or systems thinking.  Because the chain of reasoning with supporting evidence and analysis is missing in these kinds of articles, as it is from so much of the popular press, the concept of followership is rendered banal and full of the kinds of clichés that already characterize popular leadership writing.  Frankly, when the term is used by popular writers, it seems no different from a Rorschach blot designed to introduce coercive management ideology under a guise of employee empowerment.  It is worth noting, though, if only to recognize that the concept is becoming popular.

 

The scholarly literature on followers is fairly thin because until recently the concept of followers being important to leaders has been underestimated and undervalued.  Pyramidal, command-and-control forms of management dominated the 20th century business world.  There were some exceptions.  Burns (1978) urged for research on followers (p. 61), and Heller and Van Til (1982) wrote that “leadership and followership are linked concepts; neither can be comprehended without understanding the other” (p. 405).  But most research and thinking has been leader-centric, as noted by Lord, Brown, & Freiberg (1999) and prompting Yukl and Van Fleet (1992) to write, “Most of the prevailing leadership theories have been simple, unidirectional models of what a leader does to subordinates” (p. 186).   Leadership in most instances refers to a person rather than to an influence process involving both leaders and followers.

 

The literature on followership has developed over the past three or four decades with different strains.  One might be described as a utilitarian focus about how followers might further the leader’s or organization’s goals without much thought to the needs of followers or to the development of leadership and followership concepts and roles.  Another strain, stronger in recent years and more harmonious with servant-leadership, is a humanitarian one that is concerned with the follower in a holistic way.  Wilson (1971), for example, described the utilitarian thrust when he wrote “One might say that followers determine a leader and the degree of followership determines the effectiveness of the leader” (p. 11).  Followers are here considered a function of supervision: “As the make up of the employee group changes the supervisory leadership pattern to secure the best followership has to be altered and adjusted to the group if good followership is to be secured” (p. 12).  Supervision, as a form of situational leadership, was something that the leader does to followers to achieve management goals.

 

Sherwin (1972) described an early holistic strain concerned with followership development when he wrote, “Organization is a strategy for achieving goals.  Based on this criterion, our strategy has to be judged incomplete; the organization has not permitted its members to satisfy their psychological and social needs” (p. 38).  Setting up a spectrum of commitment versus compliance, he saw four major impediments to commitment: (a) concepts about power; (b) specialization; (c) the “one-man, one-boss principle” (p. 38); and (d) forms of organization.  First, by its very existence, power makes an employee conclude that his goals and the organization’s conflict.  The solution to this is relationship, which the leader and follower develop by recognizing that the follower role is primary, not secondary.  The “key to followership is that every individual is always striving to meet his own psychological needs” (p. 41) and individuals will follow leaders who help individuals satisfy those needs.  Second, for the other obstacles he proposed technical solutions that help to level the organizational playing field so that leaders and followers can develop relationship to one another in ways that further serve the followers’ needs.

 

Kelly (1988) was one of the first in the current literature to note that followers are as important to organizations as leaders.  He proposed a two-dimensional matrix that measured two scales: independent, critical thinking and active/passive behavior and attitudes.  This rendered five types of followers that he identified as Sheep, Yes People, Alienated Followers, Effective Followers, and Survivors.  Only the Effective Followers contribute to the organization’s health; they are characterized by the ability to self-manage, to demonstrate commitment to a purpose greater than self, and the capacity to actively build their skills and competencies.  Building on this work, Kelley (1992) developed a questionnaire that determines followership style, changing some of the category names: Pragmatist Followers (Survivors); Alienated Followers; Exemplary Followers (Effective Followers); Conformist Followers (Yes People); and Passive Followers (Sheep).  He also renamed his scales to Independent Thinking and Active Engagement.  As predicted, Conformists and Passive types scored low on both scales; Survivors in the middle ranges on both; Exemplary high on both; and Alienated high on independent thinking but low on active engagement.

 

Exemplary Followers are “courageous, honest, and credible” (Kelley, 1988, p. 144). These positive attributes match up negatively with individuals representing the other four types, who passively or actively undermine the leader’s goals.  Kelley’s matrix revealed that the traits of effective followers resemble those of effective leaders, leading him to conclude that each “is not a person but a role, and what distinguishes followers from leaders is not intelligence or character but the role they play” (p. 146).  Correspondingly, he necessarily used the terms “leadership” and “followership” and suggested four steps for creating effective followership.  These include (a) redefining followership as a role equal to leadership; (b) creating a followership training program; (c) using employee evaluations for followership appraisal; and (d) changing organizational structures to encourage followership development such as leaderless groups, groups with temporary or rotating leadership, delegation of decisions to the lowest possible level, and creating rewards and incentive programs.  Though Kelley saw the Exemplary Follower as the most desirable type, Hackman and Johnson (2004) pointed out that he overlooked the scenarios in which different types may function better for organizational goals because “Other attributes might be necessary if the group faces a dangerous task or an unreasonable leader” (p. 56).  Their analysis implicitly suggested a situational-follower theory.

 

A likely scenario for the future of followership is mapped out by Drucker, who coined the term “knowledge worker” in Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959), creating a concept that he developed over the next five decades.  The knowledge worker is a unique form of follower that has emerged because of the Information Revolution.  The knowledge worker, Drucker noted, knows more about his work than his employer does.  The Industrial Revolution used workers’ brawn to produce goods and services; the Information Revolution uses brains because the entire planet’s economy is being restructured through the technology-mediated application of logic and analysis.  The only way to have effective followership among knowledge workers is “by turning them from subordinates into fellow executives, and from employees, however well paid, into partners” (1999, p. 57).  This corresponds with many of the values of servant-leadership.  The employer risks the capital in this scenario but cannot attract employees without accepting the partnership value of the knowledge worker. 

 

Redefining followership as a role equal to leadership fits well with Heenan and Bennis (1999) insofar as Drucker’s concept of “fellow executives” is limited to the second-in-command.  Heenan and Bennis argued for a co-leadership model that they defined through many case study illustrations of prominent leaders who shared power with a follower to optimize organizational goals.  Co-leaders are individuals such as General George Marshall, widely regarded as a truly great leader but one who worked in relative obscurity compared to his three presidents: Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.  The co-leader, in terms of this literature review, is a servant-leader type who is willing to give up the spotlight while taking on some of the organization’s hardest work.  Heenan and Bennis also argued that co-leadership culture can be developed in ways that enhance the entire organization. 

 

Among the more important steps to a co-leadership culture: (1) celebrate the enterprise, not celebrity, by putting the emphasis on the collective work of the group rather than on one individual; (2) encourage togetherness through teamwork; (3) cultivate equalitarianism by keeping status distinctions to a minimum; (4) nurture trust and communicate hope in the future; (5) solicit dissent and put allegiance to group values above loyalty to the individual leader; and (6) share power and authority.  (Hackman & Johnson, 2004, p. 19)

 

An important theme in followership literature is empowerment, which is clearly a concern of servant-leadership.  Greenleaf’s (2002) major work contained the word “power” in its title; a major compilation of his collected writings (Greenleaf, 1998) also uses power in the title.  In any case, the servant-leader is one who shares power because the primary motivation for leading is service, not control or esteem or other egocentric needs.  There are also a number of reasons for organizational efficacy that motivate leaders to empower others, summarized by Hackman and Johnson (2004).

 

Five reasons for empowering others are: (1) to increase follower task satisfaction and performance, (2) to foster greater cooperation in the group, (3) to ensure the survival of the group or organization, (4) to encourage the personal growth and learning of group members, and (5) to prevent power abuses.  (p. 150)

 

Several models for empowerment have developed recently, ranging from the existential valuing of the individual by servant-leaders to organizational models and techniques. Chaleff (2003) wedded the two strains of followership I have suggested—utilitarian and subjective—and provided a model of “courageous followership” that empowers the follower through servant-followership that legitimizes power.  “The exercise of power presumes the hope for success and the willingness to risk failure, but a values-centered use of power assures that even if goal-achievement failures occur, they will not be compounded by failures of human decency” (p. 219).  For Chaleff, courage is the motivating force for followership that emphasizes five principles: the courage to be accountable; to serve; to challenge; to help transform; and to depart, to whistleblow, or to take whatever action stops unethical leadership.  Using Kelley’s schema, Banutu-Gomez (2004) proposed a model for the development of exemplary followers, which included strategies for helping “followers relinquish a typically Western credo: ‘I am free to do whatever I want, so long as it does not harm anyone’, and substitute instead ‘I am free to do whatever I want, so long as it benefits more than just myself’” (p. 144).  The process for this is two-fold: (a) the servant-leader teaches the follower by example how to follow effectively through independent thinking and other skills, and (b) the follower emulates the behavior of great leaders: “Great leaders lead best by becoming exemplary followers of great leaders before them” (p. 151).  As with Chaleff (2003), the key ingredient for Banutu-Gomez is courage: “The problem leaders face, in trying to teach leadership to their followers, is that many people actually find freedom terrifying because it poses too many choices and too much uncertainty” (p. 144).

Much of the servant-leader’s success relies upon open dialogue with followers about values and ends and means that can serve to delimit fear to en-courage followers.  Autry (2001) sees mutual purpose as the key to establishing followership for a servant-leader.

 

A discussion of values begins with the question, "How are we together as we go about performing our mission in order to fulfill our purpose?"  . . . . The result is that there is usually a gap between how they'd like things to be and how they are.  No surprise about that.  The important insight that people learn from this "values gap analysis" is that everyone has a role, indeed a responsibility, to participate in determining the values that they together want to manifest toward one another and toward their work as they go about accomplishing their mission in order to fulfill their purpose . . . . Without a sense of how we want to be together in this enterprise, in this mutual endeavor, in this community of work, we will have no framework for how we will behave toward one another.  Without a framework, the culture will sort of evolve on its own and, predictably, will have become dysfunctional from time to time, if not all the time.  (pp. 31-33)

 

This proposition cuts both ways though, negative and positive, because for every Gandhi there is a Jim Jones, for every bureaucrat with sparks of entheos flying there are a dozen waterlogged duds.  The self-awareness of followers in discerning a hierarchy of vision from negative to positive has been a challenge in human history.  I remember a friend of mine complained to me about her boyfriend many years ago.  “Men,” she exclaimed, “only tell you what you want to hear.”  I replied, “Then be very careful about what you want to hear” but she did not want to hear what I was saying!  As Peter Senge pointed out in his afterword to Greenleaf (2002), “We do not see the world around us.  We see the world we are prepared to see” (p. 354). 

 

For some of these reasons, not all leadership scholars agree that followership is a desirable model, finding it flawed by serious conceptual problems.  Beyond surface considerations that tend to lump all followers into Kelley’s (1988; 1992) ineffective sheep and survivors, Heifetz (1999) argued that the term follower simply has too many authoritarian meanings and connotations for it to be useful.  Instead, he argued as Greenleaf (2002) did, for more leaders to emerge.  Heifetz wrote, “The logical construct in the terms leadership and followership is bankrupt. You can lead without followers.  In fact, the best leadership does not generate followers—it generates other leaders.  It generates people who are willing to take responsibility” (p. 20).  Rosenau (2004) put this concept in descriptive functionalist terms, writing “Followership is of such importance that often it is not clear who is leading and who is following” (p. 17).  Heifetz (1994) further argued that focus on the leader creates a culture of dependency.  In his argument against charismatic leadership and the kind of followership that sustains it, he asked a wonderfully troubling question that cuts to the heart of the relational power of followership: “We do not realize that the source of their charisma is our own yearning.  What would have become of Adolf Hitler had he been born in normal times?” (p. 66).  This failure of charisma to sustain effective followership because it actually flawed followership that creates the leader’s power has been noted by many authors, including Rosenau (2004), who wrote,

 

A leader’s charisma is embedded in the orientations and needs of his or her followers.  It can quickly dissipate, say, if a severe recession sets in, corruption is uncovered, or a war is lost …. Thus charisma is a relational process, a set of ties between leaders and those who are ready to follow and comply with their urgings.  It is rooted as much in the minds and emotions of followers as in the qualities of leaders. (p. 16)

 

As with Heifetz (1999), who implied that the true task of leadership is not to develop or manage followers but to develop more leaders, Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa (2005) proposed a model for authentic followership that also creates more leaders based on their conclusion that the same set of attributes exist for both types, authentic leader and authentic follower.  The leader models this behavior, which the follower develops as a consequence.  The authors define authenticity as “both owning one’s personal experiences (values, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs) and acting in accordance with one’s true self (expressing what you really think and believe and behave accordingly” (pp. 344-345).  This integrity between internal states and behaviors is the essence of authenticity.

 

The Gardner et al. (2005) schema is based on previous work by Luthans and Avolio (2003) in authentic leadership development and is augmented by Howell & Shamir’s (2005) study on the need to focus on followers and followership while building leadership models or theories.  Authentic leaders develop relationships that are distinguished by trust through transparency and openness, by pursuit of important goals, and by stressing follower growth.  In the end, “By being true to one’s core beliefs and values and exhibiting authentic behavior, the leader positively fosters the development of associates until they become leaders themselves” (p. 345). 

 

In arguing for a model of authentic followership development, Gardner et al. (2005) cited a fact of the modern workplace that supports Drucker’s (1999) previously mentioned perspective about the knowledge worker.  Because the same information is so readily available to everyone in an organization, a follower even “at the bottom of a traditional hierarchy knows the most about technology implementation, customers, vendors, changes in markets and variations in performance” (p. 368).  As a consequence, leaders must display the transparency and integrity identified as authentic leadership by the authors or risk losing credibility, market share, or other important organizational assets.  To illustrate this they contrasted the examples of Warren Buffett, who stated that without integrity his company could lose in 37 minutes the reputation for unquestioned ethics that took 37 years to build, with those of Worldcom, Enron, and Martha Stewart. Seen this way, they concluded that understanding how to develop authenticity in leaders and followers is of paramount importance to contemporary organizations.

 

All of these writers discussed the ethical responsibilities of followers within the backdrop of the 20th century.  It was a nightmarish time in many countries, and in the world during global conflicts, when the leaders of several nation-states, armed with the perfect plan to construct the perfect world, murdered tens of millions who did not fit the plan.  Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pohl Pot, Idi Amin . . . .  The “other” was created and destroyed.  Certainly, this was coercive leadership at its most evil, but it speaks to Heifetz’ (1999), Greenleaf’s (2002), and Chaleff’s (2003) points that the world depends so much on either the courage and integrity of follower or the willingness of all who are able to stand up as leaders.  One can only pray that the world will eventually learn what Greenleaf noted when he wrote the following:

 

The better society will come, if it comes, with plenty of evil, stupid, apathetic people around and with an imperfect, ponderous, inertia-charged “system” as vehicle for change.  Liquidate the offending people, radically alter or destroy the system, and in less than a generation they will all be back.  It is not in the nature of things that a society can be cleaned up once and for all according to an ideal plan.  And even if it were possible, who would want to live in an aseptic world?  Evil, stupidity, apathy, the “system” are not the enemy even though society building forces will be contending with them all the time.  The healthy society, like the healthy body, is not the one that has taken the most medicine.  It is the one in which the internal health-building forces are in the best shape. 

 

The real enemy is fuzzy thinking on the part of good, intelligent vital people, and their failure to lead, and to follow servants as leaders.  Too many settle for being critics and experts. . . .  too little disposition to “the problem” as residing in here and not out there.

 

In short, the enemy is strong natural servants who have the potential to lead but do not lead, or who choose to follow a nonservant.  They suffer.  Society suffers.  And so it may be in the future.  [emphasis original] (pp. 58-59)

 

 

 

REFERENCES

Autry, J. A. (2001). The servant leader: How to build a creative team, develop great morale, and improve bottom-line performance. Roseville, CA: Prima.

 

Banutu-Gomez, M. B. (2004). Great Leaders Teach Exemplary Followership and Serve As Servant Leaders. Journal of American Academy of Business, 4(1/2), 143-151.

 

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

 

Chaleff, I. (2003). The courageous follower: Standing up to & for our leaders (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

 

Drucker, P. F. (1959). Landmarks of tomorrow. New York: Harper.

 

Drucker, P. F. (1999). Beyond the information revolution. Atlantic Monthly, 284(4), 47-54.

 

Gardner, W. L., Avolio, B. J., Luthans, F., May, D. R., & Walumbwa, F. (2005). "Can you see the real me?" A self-based model of authentic leader and follower development. Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 343-372.

 

Greenleaf, R. K. (1998). The power of servant-leadership.  (L.C. Spears, Ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

 

Greenleaf, R. K.(2002). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness (L.C. Spears, Ed., 25th anniversary ed.). New York: Paulist Press.

 

Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2004). Leadership: A communication perspective (4th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland.

 

Heenan, D. A., & Bennis, W. G. (1999). Co-leaders: The power of great partnerships. New York: John Wiley.

 

Heifetz, R. A. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

 

Heifetz, R. A. (1999). Leadership vs. Authority. Across the Board, 36(4), 19.

 

Heller, T., & Van Til, J. (1982). Leadership and followership: Some summary propositions. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 18(3), 405-414.

 

Howell, J. M., & Shamir, B. (2005). The Role of Followers in the Charismatic Leadership Process: Relationships and Their Consequences. Academy of Management Review, 30(1), 96-112.

 

Kelley, R. E. (1988). In Praise of Followers. Harvard Business Review, 66(6), 142-148.

 

Kelley, R. E. (1992). The power of followership: How to create leaders people want to follow, and followers who lead themselves. New York: Doubleday/Currency.

 

Lord, R. O., Brown, D. J., & Freiberg, S. J. (1999). Understanding the dynamics of leadership: The role of follower self-concepts in the leader/follower relationship. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 78, 167-203.

 

Musselwhite, C. (2006). Why Great Followers Make the Best Leaders. Harvard Management Update, 11(3), 3-3.

 

Rosenau, J. (2004). Followership and Discretion. Harvard International Review, 26(3), 14-17.

 

Sherwin, D. S. (1972). Strategy for winning employee commitment. Harvard Business Review, 50(3), 37-47.

 

Wilson, H. (1971). Changing Patterns of Supervisory Leadership. Industrial Management, 13(11), 11.

 

Yukl, G., & Van Fleet, D. D. (1992). Theory and research on leadership in organizations. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed., pp. 147-197). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.