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Leadership and followership
Leadership and followership

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5.2 Development

Looking from the followers’ perspective, Kelley (1988) suggests that while leadership training and development is undertaken by many organisations, few focus on training their followers. He outlines topics for a potential follower training programme as follows:

  • Improving independent, critical thinking
  • Self-management
  • Disagreeing agreeably
  • Building credibility
  • Aligning personal and organisational goals and commitments
  • Acting responsibly towards the organisation, the leader, co-workers and oneself
  • Similarities and differences between leadership and followership roles
  • Moving between the two roles with ease.

More recently, Oc et al. (2023) undertook a systematic and critical review of the study of followers in leadership research. Their recommendation for future leadership development initiatives is to focus first on ‘how a group of individuals interact with each other’, determining their common, shared objective before turning to ‘the things they need to do to achieve that objective’. They conclude that both leaders and followers must ‘learn how leadership can be shared and how the roles they play can change depending on the circumstances’ (p. 18).

As well as providing suitable training and development opportunities, there are several other ways in which you can support and encourage your followers:

  • Allow them to take responsibility and lead on different elements of the work.
  • Give them praise and encouragement, acknowledging their work and taking a step back yourself.
  • Give them the confidence to be innovative by allowing them to implement changes without fear of repercussions.
  • Use your knowledge and experience to coach your followers. If you don’t have time for all of them, select some key individuals who can cascade your knowledge to other team members.

Looking at this from the opposite perspective, followers may be reluctant to be developed if they feel you are asking too much of them. For example, they may argue that they aren’t paid enough to take on more responsibility or resent you delegating tasks that they aren’t interested in. Development planning should include discussion with your followers, giving them a voice and allowing you to explain the business needs that must be addressed.

Activity 6 Developing your followers

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Think about an individual or group of people you want to develop into more effective followers or prepare for leadership in the future. They might be members of an existing team; a social group that you want to inspire; or social media followers that you want to build on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Once you’ve identified the person or group that you want to develop, spend a few minutes thinking about how you could inspire or develop them. What could you do to explore their needs and expectations?

Summarise your thinking below:

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Discussion

Now that you’ve started thinking about followers, use your leadership journal to continue to explore these ideas and form a plan. It would be great if you could implement some aspect of follower development over the next few weeks and months. Use the GROW Tool in your Toolkit [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]   to plan your next steps.

While our theoretical understanding of followership and its interdependence with leadership is still developing, it is clear, even from the more leader-centric studies, that followers play a vital role in leadership and business success.

Followers should be nurtured and encouraged to interact, sometimes critically, with leaders, and leaders should reciprocate with feedback and dialogue. This will not only enhance their engagement and motivation, but will also help to prepare them for their own leadership roles in the future.