I think this idea is a much needed and very overlooked concept about success in the workplace. I myself have even overlooked it sometimes because it is so easy to just look at the leader of a group and talk about how they are doing and their success but a leader literally is nothing without their followers so it is important to shed light on those that make a leader look good (or bad). I found it interesting the idea of followers that derive their motivation from ambition because it reminds me a lot of servant leadership. Kelley talks about how some workers have the intentions of rising up in the chain of command and in that sense, it is like they were a servant first to their boss, and then they became a boss to someone else.
Kelley also talks about how leadership and followership basically have people of all the same qualities, it is just a matter of what specific role they are playing on that day at that time of analysis that determines if they are in the followership category or the leadership category. Kelley then goes on to talk about ways to implement ways to keep effective followers in different scenarios and while I think they are practical, employees do not always have that perfect balance of qualities mentioned earlier in the article and so putting this ideas into place will most likely show difficulty. I know that it is supposed to be ways to encourage effective followers but it does not mean every group of people will have the right mindset about changes because maybe they think they are already good at what they do.
5 Comments