As I head into\u00a0my sixth week at Common Purpose, I have noticed that several of my co-workers have made similar comments about one of my supervisors. My colleagues have noted that although my supervisor can be difficult to work with, she does her job well. As I look through Tom R. Tyler\u2019s article on Legitimacy entitled \u201cPsychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation,\u201d I am noticing that several of the attributes described in the article are ones that my supervisor possesses.<\/p>\n
During one of our programs, it became clear to me that my boss was a perfectionist. She would check over all of our work multiple times, focus for long periods of time on small details, and have us meet for 2-4 hours a day to debrief. Although this was at times frustrating, I believe that my colleague and I who worked under my supervisor were inclined to follow her because she was legitimate.<\/p>\n
Although Tyler writes about legitimacy as it relates to power and punishment, I believe that my supervisor\u2019s legitimacy came from the amount of influence that she has. For both my colleague and I, running this specific program was new to us. The amount of knowledge my supervisor had made us more accepting of the tedious tasks she asked us to complete. Her ability to capture a room and convey the purpose of the program made me feel like she was someone that I could follow – regardless of how tiring it was to do so. She was so familiar with the program that I felt that it was actually in my best interest to follow her lead.<\/p>\n
I believe that legitimacy as a concept does an excellent job of explaining why followers are willing to do what their leaders ask for. At the same time, I wish that in the literature, there was more discussion around what would happen if the punishment was not clear to followers. In my case, I was not afraid of being punished by my supervisor. In fact, I believe that I was more inclined to follow her because she was open to criticism, and made it easy to speak about my concerns regarding the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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