Leadership: The Importance of Followership and the Yin and Yang of Successful Leadership Practice

Followership

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A leader is a person who holds a position in a company or any organization who has an authority as in the degree of control among his followers. He commonly has a lot of influence over others. A good leader has the ability to manage a group of followers effectively in the right direction and serves as an inspiration to them. A successful leader is a person who is passionate, makes way for his followers to tread along, and operates in a group in such a way that everyone around him is benefitted through his actions. Jim Callaghan (1970) stated that a leader should not necessarily be consistent in everything to appear consistent. The duties of the leader may seem simple for a spectator but the difficulties and the struggles that he faces are insurmountable. An astute leader is an efficient individual who runs a small-business and know his job. He has been in the field for relatively many years and has made his research and survey good enough to predict the outcomes for every change that happen in the market. He knows the market around him better than anyone. He has a long term vision and can determine how the market may face changes at any point of time (Doyle Jr. 2013). This vision is only possible when he has a thorough knowledge about the market scenario and does his homework rather than just working partially. A boss can act only when he is within an organization but a leader can act and shine anywhere. He is always prepared to take on the challenges that come approaching his way. The astute leaders always make sure that he stays organized in order to be ready for anything. This gives the leader the head start of not panicking when an unexpected situation arises. As much as he knows his market and is prepared to face any new obstacles in the business, he also must know about his employees by constantly staying in touch with them (Aaker, Kumar & Day 2008). The employees are provided with assessments of their performances and are given the necessary feedback. Appreciation is a must and their work is always noticed and their input is praised. This type of leadership is necessary in a small business that can potentially lead the business to different levels of success (Efford 2012).

Yin And Yang Of A Successful Leadership Practice

Followership may be defined as the ability to follow a specific interest or a person and to support the same to maximize the efforts of the interested field or the person. Followership however is highly undervalued. There has not been enough funding and time spent on researching about followership. Followership is just as important as leadership. A book search in the website amazon.com showed results of book titles of more than 95,000 (Bjugstad et. al., 2006). But the search in the same website on followership showed results less than 1,000 titles which were mostly on political and spiritual followership. It has come out that the leadership is not a one way channel but actually a two-way process. The cooperation of the followers is more than just essential for a leader to succeed in the target that he aims to achieve. Hansen (1987) has told that an effective followership means that a leader’s authority has been accepted and complying of the visions of the leader would be taken up. The small business needs higher concentration on focus on the market since the company is still in the developing stage and needs much working on. The followers are not generally motivated by what the leaders expect them to do but actually are motivated with the leaders taking the time to care about what an individual follower wants at a specific point of time (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee 2001). Astute leaders think about their team and the company’s welfare more often than they think what is best for them. There are three things that a follower needs in order for him to successfully complete any job that is assigned to him. He needs the confidence that he can do the work without any obstacles during the process. They require knowing that the astute leader truly trusts them in doing the work (Forbes 2016). This is usually very important they know that they are trusted which would shatter their confidence if not. The trust the leaders shower upon them gives them the courage to work on the assignment even when they know that they can’t possibly do the best. The relationship between a leader and a follower is mutual (Lickerman 2013). There should be an equilibrium state where the process is symbiotic and they both are equally benefitted. This defines how they both are needed in a system for effective outcome in any organization. The leader is nothing without the involvement of a follower who would comply with the rules and regulations of a superior authority who guides them towards a fixed common goal. Kelly (1992) formulated a theory by studying the thoughts of followers and categorized them into four different types. Alienated followers are the people who are always skeptical of the leader’s decisions in a healthy way. And there are conformist followers are the followers who exactly follow what they are told them to do. They don’t question the methods but are happy to complete the tasks assigned to them on time without any problems (Kelley 1992). Passive followers mostly require the leader to do the thinking for them. They need to be guided entirely through any task assigned to them. And finally, there are the exemplary followers who are generally independent, innovative and are willing to question the methods in which the leadership is handled. They are well aware of how their works are to be done and require no assistance or guidance (Malhotra 2008).

The yin and yang represent the general conflicting entities black and white of any scenario. But the fact that needs to be considered here with the inclusion of leader and a follower is that they both are not exactly in conflict but are in accordance with each other represented by grey color. This is the mutual concern of both the leader and his followers. The yin and yang also represent the followers and the leader where the follower is ready to receive, has intuition and is thoughtful of the tasks assigned to him and the leader is the yang where he has the qualities of energy, achievement and drives encouragement (Linton nd). Communication is an effective way to control this grey portion of the theory where the followers make their voices heard with the leader. The leader, in turn, voices his thoughts to the followers before he makes a decision (Peterson 2013). Making the decision alone is not appropriate. Proper analysis of the followers’ opinions in mind must determine the direction in which the decision should be made. Leaders and followers are more similar than different. Goleman et.al (2002) described followership as a mirror image of leadership. Successful leaders constantly work on their leadership styles that can work on their followers. Followers may react differently for every different style of leaderships that leaders handle (Mindtools nd). Having the sense to understand the followers on what suits them is where the degree of excellence comes in for the leader to be the better one. The followers see the tasks as opportunities to learn and fulfill the expectations of any organization if they do the task with the leader by their side continuously giving them feedback and appreciation throughout. Guidance from the leader and the cooperation from the follower play a vital role in determining the success of a company in a market surrounded by tough competitors. The competitors also have the company also has a set of leader and followers that will be reason for their progress and future success. As mentioned earlier, the relationship must be symbiotic (Vecchio 2005). The outcome of a success is not possible without the proper relationship between the leader and the followers. A good leader must understand the needs of the followers and work in the direction that would satisfy them and promote the company’s growth. The actions in both leader and followers’ action is that a leader should be able to step down to walk with the followers and the followers should step up their game to walk faster. The differences between the both are very minimal as their contributions are equally important in deciding the success of a company (Thompson & McHugh 2009). Appropriate methods are to be handled by the leader that does not affect anyone’s feelings or must never be overburdening to a fellow follower. The guidance that a leader gives the followers is important and it must be in accordance with the nature of the specific follower. Giving out the same type of guidance to ever followers is a bad idea to be following. There are other ways to analyze the follower behavior and to direct them to their own comfort zone. The followers make up the leaders as they are the primary cases who give rise to the successful leaders. Without followers there can’t be any leader. If the theorists understand this, more researches would be targeted on this regard (Zhang et. Al. 2015). The followers’ mindsets and perspectives are yet to be understood clearly whereas we already have more than enough studies about how a leader should be and what his roles and duties are.

Conclusion

This argument clearly shows the importance of followership in the successful leadership practices. Most of the theories that are made nowadays are focused on the leadership part and they fail to analyze the followership criteria in the process. The researchers are slowly realizing the need to understand the followers with the same intensity they are doing for the leaders. Leaders should be capable of combining their self-centeredness with other-centeredness (Wilson 2013). They should serve as a role model and inspire the followers directly or indirectly in every way. The astute leader should act in an isolated manner away from the followers when they are not to be interrupted and must step down when their followers need guidance in handling the task. The taskforce management is the key aspect in the yin-yang relationship as it comes around in more numbers than that of the leaders. The leaders must never show favoritism within his set of followers as that destroys the trust they have on the leader and would probably backfire. The time frames and the standards that are expected of the followers must not come out in a strict way. Instead, leading them by examples may be the right approach in making them understand what they are required to do. The leader’s actions can have a huge influence in the performance of the followers. A good leader does not need teaching regarding this. He allows the followers to be a little flexible to be self-driven and be decisive. The followers on the other hand, should learn to trust their leaders and accept him on his insights and ideologies. Follower should act in unison to provide a complete solution. The followers are to be well-aware of their surroundings. There are good and bad followers. Effective followers manage themselves well. Some do not have the critical thinking ability to work on the orders of a leader without questioning and some are independent and can work on their own without any requirement of assistance or guidance. Finally, it can be concluded that the leader and the followers are mutually important and are not less than each other. Their work should be cooperative and without that the company’s productivity would suffer from severe blows in the market. The leaders must understand this and get to know the feelings of the followers thoroughly before they deicide doing any major changes for an organization. 

References

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