2.4 Followership

Followership Styles

Although there is a great deal of leadership about the concepts of leadership, there isn’t as much about people who follow those leaders. Followership is “the act or condition under which an individual helps or supports a leader in the accomplishment of organizational goals” (Wrench et al., 2015, p. 209).

Ira Chaleff was one of the first researchers to examine the nature of followership in his book, The Courageous Follower (Courageous Followership, 2022). Chaleff (2003) believes that followership is not something that happens naturally for a lot of people, so it is something in which people must be willing to engage. From this perspective, followership is not a passive behavior. Ultimately, followership can be broken down into two primary factors: the courage to support the leader and the courage to challenge the leader’s behavior and policies. The two primary factors lead to four followership styles: resource, individualist, implementer, and partner. Before proceeding to followership styles, you may want to watch the video Chaleff produced that uses tango to illustrate his basic ideas of followership below: 

Resource

The first follower style discussed by Chaleff is the resource. Resources will not challenge or support their leader. Chaleff argues that resources generally lack the intellect, imagination, and courage to do more than what is asked of them. When it comes to resources, they usually do what is requested of them, but nothing that goes beyond that.

Individualist

The second followership style is the individualist. Individualists tend to do what they think is best in the organization, not necessarily what they’ve been asked to do. It’s not that individualists are inherently bad followers; they have their perspectives on how things should get accomplished and are more likely to follow their perspectives than those of their leaders. Individualists provide little support for their leaders, and they are the first to speak out with new ideas that contradict their leader’s ideas.

Implementer

The third followership style is the implementer. Implementers are very important for organizations because they tend to do the bulk of the day-to-day work that needs to be accomplished. Implementers busy themselves performing tasks and getting things done, but they do not question or challenge their leaders.

Partner

The final type of followership is the partner. Partners have an inherent need to be seen as equal to their leaders regarding both intellect and skill levels. Partners take responsibility for their own and their leader’s ideas and behaviors. Partners do support their leaders but have no problem challenging their leaders. When they do disagree with their leaders, partners point out specific concerns with their leader’s ideas and behaviors.

Figure 2.1 Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational-Leadership Theory is derived from Interpersonal Relationships at Work in Interpersonal Communication – Simple Book Publishing Copyright © by Jason S. Wrench; Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter; and Katherine S. Thweatt licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

This section is derived from Interpersonal Relationships at Work in Interpersonal Communication – Simple Book Publishing Copyright © by Jason S. Wrench; Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter; and Katherine S. Thweatt licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.