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.
One connection I made to your post was this idea that the leader starts out as a follower who rises through the ranks is similar to the coaching style Coach K uses for the Duke basketball team. When asked about how he hires assistant coaches, Coach K responded “I won’t hire anyone to my staff that doesn’t have aspirations to be a head coach of their own program.” Effective followers are very important to Coach K and he clearly encourages deliberation and open discussions with his staff that may even at times challenge his own decisions.
I agree with your final statement. I feel like this article focuses on if the followers have the same goals and motivations, and are effective. It doesn’t really take account for other scenarios.
I found the section about ways to encourage effective followership interesting, but it did not talk about any of the potential drawbacks. I think the author should have mentioned more of what could potentially gone wrong. Not all of those strategies will work for everyone.
I agree with your point that implementing these ideas of becoming effective followers would be hard because of how demanding the role is and how many aspects there are to it. I think that once someone becomes an effective follower, they can teach others how to copy them to an extent.
I thought your point about similarities to servant leadership is very important; a good leader reflects his or her followers’ wants and needs but depending on the validity or significance of these wants and needs a leader can be reflected as ineffective or effective.