FOLLOWERSHIP
“Followership: the capacity or willingness to follow a leader” merriam-webster.com
“Followership: the attitude that informs follower behavior” scott heise
In our effort to understand leadership and how we produce effective leaders, we often look directly past those who allow leadership to occur: followers. In the same way that each leader is an individual with strengths and challenges, so too are followers individuals with their own strengths and challenges. A careful examination of how followers see their roles and how their attitude about following shapes their behaviors may help explain what compels people to follow and how followership and leadership are understood in context.
We look to leadership to provide the protection, direction, and order needed to make sense of our society and to make our way through challenges. Aristotle, Pope Francis, George Washington, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, your high school soccer captain, and your local councilwoman are generally recognized as leaders, but how did they emerge from the masses to perform their leadership roles? They were not acting to achieve their own ends, each of them performed their roles in service to a higher cause. What prepared them as followers to emerge as leaders in their time?
None of these leaders achieved personal gain through their service and none were leading for themselves. What caused George Washington to emerge as a revolutionary leader or Associate Justice Sotomayor to reach the pinnacle of her career and then dedicate her life in service to her country? What compels one to sacrifice their autonomy to subscribe to the leadership of another when there is no extrinsic motivation for their actions.
When we take the time to consider how and when people exercise leadership, we might also consider what shaped their followership attitude in the manner that allowed them to emerge as leaders.
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