FOLLOWER-SHIP:Importance of Followers, Follower-ship Style

<< MANAGERS VS LEADERS:Characteristics, Effective Leadership, Respect for Diversity

LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Strategies for Cultivating Exemplary Followers, Important Traits of Leaders >>

Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

Lesson 06

FOLLOWER-SHIP

We will still discuss the topic of leader vs. mangers in the start of this lecture and than shift to next

topic the followers.

Leadership is important in organizations because leaders are the ones who make things happen.

Organizations are shifting from conventional management to leadership. In this competitive

environment now with simple routine management and simple manager, survival of organization is

becoming difficult. Unless you have a vision, know the people and human behavior aspects, understand

team dynamics and motivation, understand the trust and responding change, challenging the status quo

and believe on sharing the power and participative management, survival of a manger or leader will be

difficult. All these characteristics are mostly present in leaders but not in mangers. So today's

organization needs more leaders rather than managers. But both are important. We need leaders who are

good mangers too.

Without leaders, an organization would find it difficult to get things done. Bottom line is organization

needs to focus on people and try to identify and separate leaders from followers and accordingly train

and develop both important resources an organization can have i.e. "the People". A very famous

Chinese saying is;

"If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain.

If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees.

If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.

-- Chinese proverb

MANAGERS VERSUS LEADERS: We are still in the same discussion of manager vs leader to give

more emphasizes on leaders and explain why this is becoming more and more important. Let me put

these distinctions between managers and leaders in a different way.

Mangers use authority to get things from his people and drive them while leader prepare them and act

as a coach for the job done. Manger influence other though the legitimate authority vested on him/her

due to position and other obeys him/her due to that position. While leaders influence through their

goodwill and personality. It doesn't mean they have no legitimate power. They do have that power but

they believe on the power of team, synergy and participative management.

Mangers inspire fear and use coercive power while leaders inspire enthusiasm and create excitement

among team members.

The Manager knows how it is done and they get others to fallow the set procedures for the

accomplishment of any job.

The Leader shows how it is done. They always try to create a different. They will challenge the

process for business process re-engineering to improve the system and for efficiency.

The Manager says "Go". The give orders and sit back to see others deliver.

The Leader says "Let's Go". They take other along and set example. This approach increases

the moral of all team members and together they achieve more and deliver more.

The Manager says "I". Managers are mostly self centred and mainly concern about themselves.

The Leader says "We". Leaders believe on team work and mainly concerned about others and

always take team as a whole.

The Manager fixes the blame for the breakdown. If some thing went wrong, managers try to

find out the culprit and fix the responsibility.

The Leader fixes the breakdown. In case of leadership, if this situation arrives, leaders will try

to figure out the causes of any breakdown and also try to fix this breakdown rather than just

fixing responsibility.

Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

Similarly we can also discuss other distinctions between leaders and managers. But important thing

is we need good leaders with proper management capabilities. As said earlier" all leaders are

managers but not all managers are leaders"

So, we need both Leader and Manager and in a way for the success of any organization leading and

managing both required. In the given figure, it is clearly shown that both leader and manger are needed

Leading & Managing processes results satisfied stakeholders.

Follower-ship

Let's shift to second important component of leadership process, the Followers. We know that

leadership is a function of three elements.

Importance of Followers: Leaders always depend on their followers. Followers' actions/attitudes

influence their leader and the process of leadership also. Performance of leaders & followers are

depended upon one another.

Follower Traits That Influence the Leadership Process: As leaders and followers are depending

each others for performance and out come, it is very important to understand followers and their traits

that influence this leadership process.

· Values

· Norms

· Cohesiveness,

· Expectations

· Personality

· Maturity

· Competency levels

· Motivation

· Number of followers

· Trust and confidence

Qualities of effective followers are same ones we want in leaders because both are important for the

output/performance of teams/organizations.

Follower-ship Style: There are four follower-ship styles;

1. Pragmatic follower: Positive role of these types of followers are realistic and play their role

according to rules and regulation or as per legitimate powers. In negative side, they also play

political games in the organization and carries out assignments with middling enthusiasm. They

believe that staying in the rules is important also avoid the uncertainties and instability.

2. Alienated follower: These types of followers always think about themselves, but some time

play a very important role as critics within the team. Because this will help to improve the

decisions. We can say that these types of people are the whistle blowers. They can also create

problem for team. They do not work as team member and believes that their leader does not

fully recognize or utilize their talents

3. Conventional follower: These types of followers easily accept the assignment and play as a

team member and try to minimize conflict. They have lack of creativity; they don't take bold

decisions and not taking risk. They also avoid the conflict and believe that the established

system of the organization is better than outcomes.

4. Passive follower: These types of followers always rely on the leader and seldom challenge the

process and avoid any resistance. They are just spending/passing time and also require an

excessive amount of supervision. They believe that the organization doesn't want their ideas so

the leader is going to do what he/she wants anyway.

Leadership & Team Management MGMT 623

5. Exemplary follower: These types of followers contribute above and beyond the expectation.

They always try to add value in organization in any form. They are creative and risk takers.

They are highly idealistic and can suffer disappointed and even go in stress and ultimately

reach to burnout if not given importance and challenging environment. They believe that their

contribution for the organization is always essential. So they always work for organization with

commitments and devotion.

How Exemplary Followers Add Value: the exemplary followers are always focus on the goal,

contribute to the growth of other team members, always help to keep the team on track and always take

the initiative to increase their value to the organization.

- Think of someone you know in

your life who is a good leader

and write down why you think

they are a good leader...

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