Leadership — Followership is Binary
You are either leading or following, but you cannot do both at the same time
Leadership theory and scholarship have debated the role of leaders and followers as organizational and team members. Who gets to lead? What is an appropriate way to describe the people being led?
You cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen. This will only lead to chaos and disaster, and likely a bad meal.
Essentially, we have groups of people who get together to do work in corporations and some have positions of power and influence which affect other people. In a company, I believe that the range of influence is proportional to the position and level of management. Decisions by a CEO has more impact than those of a frontline manager, by definition.
Leadership goes beyond formal positions. It is a relationship between leaders and followers.1
Leadership can be shared and distributed across roles and responsibilities. Shared leadership means that in any team, the executive C-suite or a project team, members share responsibility for various aspects of leadership. Shared leadership is “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both. This influence process often involves peer, or lateral, influence and at other times involves upward or downward hierarchical influence.”2 Likewise, Spillane (2006) focuses on the practice of leadership rather than specific leadership roles or responsibilities in his Distributed Leadership model.3 He emphasized that the practice of leadership is essentially interactive between people and tailored to the situation they encounter. By virture of an aknowledgement that environmental conditions effect leadership effectiveness, this takes on elements of the classic Hershey-Blanchard Situational Leadership.4
Leadership thus becomes periodic and episodic. It takes place over time and can change based on the circumstances and needs of the group.
Individuals can step up into leadership roles and step back to observe, advise, and follow others as they lead instead. This is the heartbeat of leadership; in order to lead well, I need others to lead. Therefore, I must not assert leadership too frequently or forcefully. It is in my best interest to follow well, in order to give others the opportunity to lead and to set the example of how team members contribute real efforts to overall results.
French and Raven (1959) provided the classical categories of power distinguishing between formal and informal bases.5 An expert engineer or marketer leads because people need their help, regardless of their title. An author or speaker who is highly effective in their craft can influence many people through the power of their words and personality. This is a form of referent power that charismatic leaders draw upon to assist their rise to power.6
A question emerges: is leadership always happening in every relationship in the organization or is there a neutral state where we are neither being led nor following.
Some leaders are more hands-on than others. This range of leader involvement is the source of many debates. Can you lead from a distance? Sometimes leaders are overbearing and stifling, in other cases leaders are distant and uncertain. We must ask, what is worse for an employee, having a micromanager who looks over your shoulder or a macromanager who barely acknowledges your existence?
Interestingly, I believe this opens the door to explore the concept of self-leadership.
In a high-trust environment, leaders set the direction and give specific objectives to achieve and orders to follow. I want to know if my boss has a certain task that they need me to complete. And, I she must explain if there are certain standards or conditions I must meet.
Finishing a key task that helps them and makes me feel valued and productive. At the same time, I want to be trusted enough that I am given the responsibility to accomplish the organization’s overall goals according to the means that best fit the situation and my skills. There are times when I need the freedom and flexibility to lead myself. This allows me to grow in competance and confidence.
If you are part of an organization and you have self-directed work, you are exhibiting a form of self-leadership.
Even if you do not direct other people, the fact that you are allowed to conduct your work according to your own preferences and style means that your manager is exhibiting a form of shared leadership and that gives you the opportunity to lead yourself.7 You follow the plan and decisions set by organization leaders. And you create your own plan that details the best way for you to accomplish the goals and generate the needed results.
Therefore, leadership is binary. We are either leading or following. This is like an on-off switch, we can listen until the moment when it is appropriate to speak up. It is good to do either one; you should lead and follow well. On any given day, the most helpful thing you can do may be following the lead of others.
Still, as a leader you can and must provide direction and inspire people around you with a compelling vision. At times a leader needs to step back and create a vaccuum for others to lead. And, sometimes you need to find quiet space to lead yourself in your own personal development.
Rost, J. C. (1991). Leadership for the twenty-first century. Greenwood Publishing Group.
Pearce, C. L., & Conger, J. A. (2003). All those years ago. Shared leadership: Reframing the hows and whys of leadership, 1–18.
Spillane, James P. (2006). Distributed leadership (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Natemeyer, W. E. (1979). Situational leadership, perception, and the impact of power. Group & organization studies, 4(4), 418-428.
French, J. R., & Raven, B. H. (1959). The social bases of power. Studies in social power, 150–167.
Conger, J. (2015). Charismatic leadership. Wiley encyclopedia of management.
Pearce, C. L., Conger, J. A., & Locke, E. A. (2008). Shared leadership theory. The leadership quarterly, 19(5), 622-628.
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