<Previous Lesson

Leadership and Team Management

Next Lesson>

Lesson#6

FOLLOWER-SHIP

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.
17
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.
18
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…

<Previous Lesson

Leadership and Team Management

Next Lesson>

Home

Lesson Plan

Topics

Go to Top

Next Lesson
Previous Lesson
Lesson Plan
Topics
Home
Go to Top