I believe the 5 Essential Qualities of Effective Followership is the most important concept described in Module 5. Followership greatly impacts us as leaders and yields the most significant results when accomplishing the mission. Demonstrating effective followership enhances my ability to lead my subordinates, and it allows me to gain the trust and respect from my leadership, peers, and subordinates. To be an effective follower, I have to be able to give constructive feedback. Feedback is imperative to meet our mission objectives. Without being a good follower, I could greatly impact the views and understanding of our leaders vision in the eyes of my subordinate. If I don’t fully understand the mission, support the intent of my leaders, and be able to execute decisions made, my subordinates could imitate my actions and in turn not support my leaders vision as well. This could greatly impact the productivity within my unit and degrade mission objectives. To be an effective follower, I will be ready to accept any role needed to accomplish the mission while remaining committed to my units’ purpose. While remaining focused on becoming an effective follower, I will be able to effectively communicate constructive feedback to my leaders while my subordinates will …show more content…
I believe this will allow my peers to seek me out more often to voice opinions to our leaders or even mirror my actions and become effective followers themselves. Followership is a powerful tool that greatly affects all levels in my unit. My subordinates will thrive and remain active accomplishing my leaders vision and will feel more comfortable giving me good and honest feedback because they will know that through being a good follower, I have gained the trust and respect of my
They acknowledge people’s perspectives, and give them the support needed to meet their goals. Servant leaders involve members when decisions are appropriate helping build a stronger commitment within the team. Strong qualities of servant leadership are trust, appreciation for others, and empowerment. Honesty and integrity form the moral foundation of effective leadership through the four values of truth telling, promise
In keeping with our current awareness of followership, none of the authors in The Leader’s Companion debates the importance of followers in the leader-follower relationship. However, some (discussed below) differ in their definitions of followers and in their focus on the role of followership. This essay attempts to draw together some key ideas about followership, taken from several authors in The Leader’s Companion, with a focus on Robert Kinney’s contributions to the study of followership. Next, I will discuss some of Kinney’s subsequent work and his continuing contribution, not just to our evolving understanding of followership, but to its practical applications in a variety of contexts.
Lastly, the key to successful leadership is getting all of one’s followers on their side. In order to achieve this, leaders must gain all their followers trust. Bennis outlines four key elements to gain this trust. Primarily, constancy must be enforced. Leaders must stay the course. Second, congruity is essential. This is so the leaders can “walk the talk.” Third, reliability is needed so that leaders are present when it matters most. Lastly, leaders honor their commitments through integrity. All of these important, aspects gain the trust of their followers by their side.
D2 followers will require a high directive and a high supportive behavior from their leader. The leader will still be required to make the decisions and provide direction but will also seek out input from the follower. Seeking out input and involving the follower in the planning will not only get them involved, but will also raise their level of commitment. The leader will also need to provide support as the follower is learning as well as praise to help increase their confidence.
Therefore the leader must look at ways to get the follower to be on board with the views and ideologies of the organization. With that in mind, leaders must set the right example to move the employee from point A to B. Leaders must embrace the term of being a role model and while they may feel that they are incompetent and lack the experience of a seasoned leader. They must envision themselves as the role model to deflect the perception by the follower they are worthy of following. The follower perception of the leader as a worthy role model is conceptually different than the standard behavior that a leader may demonstrate (Organ et al., 2006) Thus the leader must set the tone through leading by personal example which facilitates the social learning process (Manz & Sims, 1981). (Yaffe & Kark, 2011) Leaders can build trust within the organization so that employees would not question or complain about the leaders decision and trust that even though they may be young, it is in the best interest of
The third leadership behavior I will work on is: Encourage the heart. I often do not recognize individuals for their accomplishment, create a spirit of community, or praise people for a job well done. I find myself thinking that my people only do the bare minimal or they do work only for the reason that it is their job. I feel in the military encouraging the heart is not tolerable for the reason that it portrays us as soft. I have a difficult time writing awards or sailor of the quarter memos which in turn depicts that I do not care about their work. To correct this behavior I will recognize members for the minor accomplishments with words of appreciation at the time, mentioning the accomplishments at all-hands, or with extra time off. When a task completion reaches the level of an award, I will take time to write the appropriate award. I will make it a point to tell people how much their work, however trivial, is accomplishing the unit’s
According to the followership style test I scored a three. This means I am a mixture of autocratic and democratic. If I had to guess without taking the test, this is what I would of guessed myself as to be. I thought this fit me well, because I am one who does not like to take the lead on things, but I also do not need supervision 24/7. According to the survey in Grossman and Valiga (2017) being a democratic person means you are a very independent person, and can start a task without being told to do so. I would like to see myself shift more towards the moderately participative category according to the survey. This would require myself to be somewhat more independent.
Leadership makes the followers want to achieve your same goals. Finkelstein states “Leaders who suffer from the illusion of personal pre-eminence often reveal this in the way they treat people around them. To these leaders, the people they interact with are instruments to be used, materials to be moulded or audiences for the leader’s performances. When business leaders think this way, they often use intimidating or excessive behaviour to dominate the people who surround them” (Finkelstein, 41). A self-serving leader is not as effective, their employees only obey them not follow them. His quality of great leadership and having his employee follow him is why the company keeps growing. Respected leaders concentrate on what they are, what they know, and what they do gaining the trust and confidence of their subordinates. To sum up, qualities of leadership presents naturally or a desired skill that he acquired with
However, each of the behaviors can be used individually or collectively as different situations call for different behaviors (Whitener, 2007). Follower characteristics describe how an individual will interpret a leader's behavior during tasks, and task characteristics describe the type of task the follower is given (Whitener, 2007).... ... middle of paper ... ...
I am constantly worried that I will fallback on the military way of influencing followers. In my past I was a very rigid and abrasive Marine that was often put in the leadership role because my superiors knew that I would get the job done no matter what. It was not until the very last year of my military duty, when the light bulb turned on. What I started to notice was if I influenced others in a positive respectful way, the mission seemed to flow easier and the followers were happy. Work will always be difficult at times but if you are projecting respect and treating other how you would want to be treated then tasks seem easier and people will enjoy working with
One very important aspect of a great leader is to lead by example. Any person in a position to guide others cannot ask the team to do one thing and act in the complete opposite way. This is a sure way to show that the leader has a need to show power and quickly loose respect from those who should be learning from him or her. Being a role model is importan...
Leadership is an intimate relationship. It is an agreement between parties made of trust and commitment on both sides. There must be mutual interest and respect between a leader and a follower. A leader must take interest in those who follow him or her. People will not follow someone that does not have their best interests at heart or someone that they feel does not respect them. It is hard to follow someone that is “assigned” to lead you unless you can form a bond. That is why getting to know the people you are leading is important. A leader must know the plans of his followers. The leader must respect the investment the follower has made in them. That is what I do. I respect the investment of the people who decide to follow me. A person must decide to lead but more importantly, people must decide to
One of the most important components of leadership is the leader. A leader is responsible for his or her followers and the overall goal of the group or organization. Leaders are the people held accountable or everything that happens, good or bad. On the other hand, the second major component of leadership is the followers. Without followers, a leader would be worthless. Followers make up the backbone of a leader because they are the masses that get goals accomplished. A leader is just one person, but the number of followers is countless. In order to be an effective follower, there are a countless number of characteristics that allow a follower to be the best they can be. Five of these characteristics include a positive attitude, communication skills, being part of the process, being open to new ideas, and patience.
Persistence is more important than ability to determine a person’s success. When there is a person who wants to do their goal or task they have to be able to work hard for their goal, they need to be dedicated to the goal, and no matter what happens they can’t give up which means that they have to keep going and going until they have finally achieved what they wanted to achieve. So this shows that a great successor needs to be very persistent to achieve and go beyond what they want to do, they need to drive themselves to success, but most of all they need to be patient and have time.
What is leadership? Leadership is defined as a process by which a individual will influence others to obtain goals. Leaders will guide, direct motivate, or inspire others. Leadership is defined by not only traits but actions as well. Leaders are inspirational, trustworthy and charismatic. Many people may think a manger is leader. Although leadership and management go hand in hand, they are not the same. Everyone has their own beliefs about what characteristics an effective leader should have. To me, communication skills, critical thinking skills, and having a vision are few characteristics of becoming an effective leader. A leader is not only born, but made. Some are born as leaders or some are made to be leaders.