Lecture #6

Topic: 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.
Management/Leadership
Mangers use authority to get things from his • The Manager drives his/her men
people and drive them. While leader prepare • The Leader coaches them
them and act as a coach for the job done.
• The Manager depends on authority
• The Leader on goodwill

• The Manager inspires fear

• The Leader inspires enthusiasm
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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.

Similarly we can also discuss other “All Leaders

distinctions between leaders and
managers. But important thing is are Managers….
we need good leaders with proper
management capabilities. As said But not all Managers
earlier” all leaders are managers are Leaders”
but not all managers are leaders”

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We Need Both Leader and

So, we need both Leader and
Manager and in a way for the success Manager of
any organization leading and
Lead People
managing both required. In the given • Direction
Manage
figure, it is clearly shown that both • Communication
• Resources Processes
leader and manger are needed • Coach
• Reinforce
Leading & Managing processes Satisfied Stakeholders
Feedback
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.

Leadership Is A Function Of Three

Elements - The Leader, The Followers,
and The Situation
Leader Personality
Position
Expertise
Etc.

Values Task
Situation
Norms Stress
Cohesiveness Environment
Followers Etc. Etc.

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

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• 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.

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

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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…