In “In Praise of Followers” Robert Kelley talks about the different types of followers there are and he also talks about the importance of having these followers follow you. He talks about how followers guide and influence the success of the leader rather than all the work being done by the leader themselves. His main argument is that the followers are just as important, if not, more important than the leader that they support.
I agree with the way that he categorized the followers into five major groups. The sheep, yes people, survivors, alienated followers, and effective followers. It reminds me of some of the followers that follow our president in today’s society. There are the people who don’t like him but accept him as our president, the sheep. There are the effective followers who actively commit themselves to supporting his policies and views. Alienated followers who think about the policies he implements but they don’t actively carry out their role or support. Survivors who just accept him as a president rather than having no president. The yes people see him making policies and believe he is doing his job. All of the different followers are prevalent in today’s society which I found interesting.
I really appreciated your example of how Americans feel regarding Donald Trump and the significance of how followers’ opinions impact his behaviors, successes and failures. I specifically like how there is a perfect alignment of each of the categorizations to a certain group of Americans’ political alignments.
I also found the way that he categorized followers into five different groups very effective in getting his point across. Your use of those groups in relation to the current administration was spot on and is a great example of those categories in modern society. And yes, all of those groups exist and will continue to exist, I believe, for a very long time.