Followership Flashcards
What are leaders and followers?
Leaders have been viewed as the causal agents for organisational success. Followership is a relationally based process that includes how followers and leaders interact to co-construct leadership and its outcomes.
What is followership?
Followership is a process whereby an individual or individual accepts the influence of others to accomplish a common goal. Followership has an ethical dimension; it is not morally neutral.
What is the relationship based perspective?
Based on social constructivism: People create meaning about their reality based as they interact with each other.
What is the concept of leadership and followership as a dance?
One person leads and the other follows. This isn’t about superiority or domain or submission. It’s just a practical issue of who initiates a movement, but there is always interplay.
What are the follower types?
- Effective - Independent and active.
- Alienated - Disillusioned and negative in outlook.
- Survivors - Do enough to get by.
- Sheep - Waits for orders and not motivated by organisational goals.
- Yes- people - Enthusiastic workers but not critical thought processes.
What are the 4 typologies of followership?
- Zalenzik (1965): Compulsive, Impulsive
- Kelley (1992): Alienated, Passive
- Chaleff (1995): Implementer, Partner
- Kellerman (2008): Isolate, Bystander
What is Zalenik’s typology?
Four types of followers:
Withdrawn - Submissive/passive: Care very little or not at all about what happens at work and consequently take little part in work activities
Masochistic - Submissive/active: Want to submit to the control of the authority figure, even though they feel discomfort in doing so.
Compulsive - Dominance/passive: Want to dominate their leaders, but hold themselves back.
Impulsive - Dominance/active: Are often rebellious, trying to lead whilst being led.
What are the key points of Kelly’s typology (1992)?
The most recognised followership typology
Perceives Followers as enormously valuable to organisations
Emphasis on the motivations of followers
What are the 4 types of followers according to Kelley?
- Passive followers: Look to leader for direction and motivation.
- Conformist followers: On the leader’s side but still look for direction and guidance.
- Alienated followers: Think for themselves and exhibit negative energy.
- Exemplary followers: Active, positive, and offer independent constructive criticism.
What do effective followers do according to Kelley?
- They self-manage and think for themselves; they exercise control, they can work without supervision.
- They show strong commitment to organisational goals as well as personal goals.
- They build their competence and master job skills.
- They are credible, ethical, and courageous.
What is Chaleff’s typology (1995, 2003, 2008)
- Chaleff asked why do people follow toxic leaders like Hitler? What can be done to prevent this from recurring?
- Constructively challenge the leader if the common purpose or integrity of the group is being threatened.
What are the Two axes of courageous followership?
Courage to support (low–high)
Courage to challenge (low–high)
What are the 4 styles of followership?
- Resource (low support, low challenge)
- Individualist (low support, high challenge)
- Implementer (high support, low challenge)
- Partner (high support, high challenge)
What is Kellerman’s typology (2008)
- Developed from a perspective of political science
- Leaders’ importance overestimated because they have more power, authority and influence; importance of followers is underestimated.
- Followers are “unleaders” with less rank and who defer to leaders.
What are the levels of engagement according to Kellerman?
- Isolates are completely unengaged.
- Bystanders are observers who do not participate.
- Participants are partially engaged and willing to take a stand on issues.
- Activists feel strongly about the leader and the leader’s policies and act on their own beliefs.
- Diehards are deeply committed to supporting the leader or opposing the leader.
What is the value of follower typologies?
- They provide labels for follower types which can assist leaders in effectively communicating with them.
- They highlight the many ways in which followers have been conceptualised.
- They share some commonalities among them.
- They provide a starting point for research.
What are the theoretical approaches to followership?
Uhl-Bien (2014): Followership consists of “characteristics, behaviours and processes of individuals acting in relation to leaders.”
Followership is a relationally-based process that includes how followers and leaders interact to construct leadership and its outcomes.
What are the new perspectives on followership?
- Followers get the job done
- Followers work in the best interest of the organisation’s mission
- Followers challenge leaders
- Followers support the leader
- Followers learn from leaders
What is the leadership co-created process?
- One person’s leadership behaviours interact with another person’s followership behaviours to create leadership and its outcomes.
- Leader behaviours are influence attempts.
- Follower behaviours grant power to another, comply, or challenge.
What are the influence triggers to leadership and followership?
- Investigates follower’s compliance or non-compliance with leadership directives.
- Barbuto argues that a leader can use several different triggers to secure follower compliance with leadership directives such as rewards and incentives.
- However, followers may also resist leadership directives because of incongruence with their values, interests and goals.
What is follower resistance?
- Constructive resistance involves well-intended efforts to open a dialog with the supervisor (e.g., ask for clarification or negotiate).
- Dysfunctional resistance involves passive–aggressive responses in which subordinates might act as if they are too busy to complete the request, pretend they did not hear it, or say they forgot.
What is follower self concept?
- Carsten et al. (2010) state that followership style played by the followers is affected by cultural norms which finally forms a self-concept.
- An individual’s self-concept refers to a personal characteristic which distinguishes an individual from another (Howell and Mendez, 2008).
- Hence, some forms of follower resistance may be rooted in a rejection of leadership directives which are perceived to violate a follower’s self concept.
What are the influence tactics of followership?
- Influence tactics used by subordinates are significantly affected by the manager’s leadership style and vary as a function of the goals he seeks to achieve by influencing the leader.
- When followers seek personal benefits (e.g., career advancement), ingratiation is the most often employed tactic.
- With respect to leader style, followers have a greater tendency to use non-rational tactics—such as blocking, upward appeal, and ingratiation.
What are the reactions to follower resistance?
- Tepper et al. (2000) studies how managers evaluate follower resistance and their influence attempts. They found two types of reactions:
- Some managers have a uniformly dysfunctional perspective (i.e., managers regard all manifestations of resistance as indicators of ineffective influence and rate subordinates unfavourably when they resist).
- Some managers have a multifunctional perspective (i.e., managers regard some manifestations of resistance as more constructive than others and rate subordinates more favourably when they employ constructive resistance tactics).
