What is Followership?

Leadership requires followership, and without understanding what the act of following entails, it is difficult to fully understand leaders and leadership. In recent years, followership has received increased attention as a legitimate and significant area of leadership study. Followership is defined as a process whereby an individual or individuals accept the influence of others to accomplish a common goal. It involves a power differential between the follower and the leader.
Early research on followership resulted in a series of typologies that differentiate the roles followers can play. The primary types of follower roles identified are active-engaged, independent-assertive, submissive-compliant, and supportive-conformer. Followers get the job done, work in the best interest of the organization’s mission, challenge leaders, support the leader, and learn from leaders.
In addition to having a positive impact, there is another, darker side to followership. Followers can play ineffective, and even harmful, roles. These factors include people’s need for reassuring authority figures; need for security and certainty; need to feel chosen or special; need for membership in the human community; fear of ostracism, isolation, and social death; and fear of powerlessness to challenge a bad leader. The emergence of these factors occurs as a result of people’s needs to find safety to feel unique and to be included in community.
In summary, the demand in society for effective, principled followers is growing and along with it a strong need for research-based theories of the process of followership. Until more research is done on the intricacies of followership, our understanding of leadership will be incomplete.

[@emilystardawnn]

thank you