A Fresh Look at Followership: A Model for Matching Followership and Leadership Styles

Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, May 2006 by Bjugstad, Kent, Thach, Elizabeth C, Thompson, Karen J, Morris, Alan

ABSTRACT

Followership has been an understudied topic in the academic literature and an underappreciated topic among practitioners. Although it has always been important, the study of followership has become even more crucial with the advent of the information age and dramatic changes in the workplace. This paper provides a fresh look at followership by providing a synthesis of the literature and presents a new model for matching followership styles to leadership styles. The model's practical value lies in its usefulness for describing how leaders can best work with followers, and how followers can best work with leaders.

Introduction

Followership has been an understudied discipline. As far back as 1933, management scholar Mary Parker Follett advocated more research into a topic that she stated was "of the utmost importance, but which has been far too little considered, and that's the part of followers..." (1949, p. 41). The lack of attention in researching followers has changed little since Follett delivered her call to arms over 70 years ago. While some scholars are beginning to look more closely at followership, this trend is less evident in the mainstream business world. A book search on the Amazon.com website revealed 95,220 titles devoted to leadership (Bjugstad, 2004). Bjugstad's search on followership found just 792 titles, and the majority of those books focused on either spiritual or political followership. Overall, the ratio of leadership to followership books was 120:1. The lack of research and emphasis on followership relative to leadership in the business world is ironic considering that the two are so intertwined.

One of the reasons followers haven't been researched is that there is a stigma associated with the term "follower." Followership may be defined as the ability to effectively follow the directives and support the efforts of a leader to maximize a structured organization. However, the term "followership" is often linked to negative and demeaning words like passive, weak, and conforming. According to Alcorn (1992), followers have been systematically devalued and, for many, the very word itself conjures up unfavorable images. This stereotype has caused people to avoid being categorized as followers. Research done by Williams and Miller (2002) on more than 1,600 executives across a wide range of industries indicated that over one-third of all executives are followers in some fashion. Yet, rarely did any of the executives concede that they were followers. The statement "Always be a leader, never a follower!" has gone a long way toward adding to the stigma of being a follower.

Another reason there is so little research on followership arises from a misconception that leadership is more important than followership. The assumption that good followership is simply doing what one is told, and that effective task accomplishment is the result of good leadership, doesn't amplify the merits of the follower role. According to Meindl (1987), management and organizational behavior have been dominated by the concept of leadership, which has assumed a romanticized, larger than life role as a result. Organizational literature is full of studies of leadership characteristics, reflecting the belief that good or bad leadership largely explains organizational outcomes. In spite of its obvious relevance to leadership, followership is rarely discussed when corporations seek to better themselves. Instead, the focus turns to developing leadership skills. Much attention is paid to what makes a leader successful because the thinking is that as the leader succeeds, so does the organization. However, this view ignores the fact that leaders need followers to accomplish their goals.

It does seem ironic that the effectiveness of a leader is to a great extent dependent on the willingness and consent of the followers. Without followers, there can be no leaders. Indeed, Hansen (1987) advanced that active followership means the leader's authority has been accepted which gives legitimacy to the direction and vision of the leader. Without the eyes, ears, minds, and hearts of followers, leaders cannot function effectively. Similarly, Depree (1992) asserted that leaders only really accomplish something by permission of the followers.

Changes in the workplace also highlight the need for examining followership in more depth. The traditional organizational hierarchy between leaders and their followers has eroded over time thanks to expanding social networks and the growing empowerment of followers through their ability to access information more easily (Cross & Parker, 2004; Brown, 2003). For example, employees now have access to information about their company and its competitors via the Internet that they were never privy to in the past. As Brown (2003) observed, leaders are "no longer the exclusive source of vital information about their companies or fields; therefore they can no longer expect to be followed blindly by their now well-informed, more skeptical ranks" (p. 68). Furthermore, the incidents at such companies as Enron, WorldCom, and Adelphia have led followers to question and distrust top leadership. Mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing have also accounted for more jaded followers. In addition, Maccoby (2004) stated that "the changing structure of families - more single-parent homes, dual working parents, and so on - have begun to create work environments where people value traditional leaders less" (p. 79). Perhaps this coincides with the decline in respect for authority figures in general. Whatever the reason, these changes signal the need to reevaluate the tendency to focus on leadership to the exclusion of followership.