Effective Followers and Followership and Organizational Success

Which group is more effective in yeilding organizational success, leaders or those who follow them?

The answer is both, but recognition has to be given to followers. There is a tendency to believe that the success of an organization rests solely with those of us who hold the leadership titles and on how well we perform our duties and make decisions. There is also the maxim that employees are essential to organizational success as long as they do the work they are directed to do. This thinking could be the contributing factor for why many leaders believe they have to make all the decisions. Consequently, the tendency is to sit in offices or convene around meeting room tables and make decisions with very little to no input from the individuals who are to execute or operationalize those decisions.

The reality however cannot be more different. Organizations are not successful because they are managed, or because their leaders can make decisions. While hierarchical structure is necessary for proper stewardship of an organization; success is achieved with effective leadership and effective followership. Bertocci (2009) noted that managers are responsible for tasks such as managing schedules, budgets, organizing, planning and problem solving; but leaders outline a vision on what needs to be accomplished, and how they are to be accomplished in order to meet organizational goals. In actuality, leaders cannot and will not effectively accomplish established goals without their followers.

Definition of follower-followership.

Follower or followership is not about an individual or group of individuals who do and say everything the manager or leader does and says. Followers are individuals who complement their leaders. They are individuals with shared goals, they contribute to ideas, they take initiative and provide constructive feedback when and where necessary. They are accountable to themselves and the others they work with.

In terms of followership, Mazzei (2022) describes the art of followership as the practice of effectively supporting the leader or the team, executing tasks and contributing to the overall mission. Followers are not always on the frontlines, they could also be in leadership positions. Regardless of the position or title, followers are essential, and the leaders’ successes are intricately tied to their followers.

My Story

I was hired as the Patient Care Manager for Perioperative Services at one of our hospitals and in the process of being oriented to the departments, my director and I passed by a large group of people standing in one the hallways. I asked her why were there so many people in the hallway? I remember referring to it as a “fire hazard”; she replied by saying, “that’s for you to fix”. I later discovered that crowd in the hall was there every day and they were patients waiting to be assessed by the team in the Surgical Pre-Admission Clinic.

The program goal was to ensure most of our patients had a preoperative assessment prior to surgery, in keeping with the Ministry of Health’s mandate at that time. We had been faced with the challenges of not being able to accept and assess patients in a timely manner, patients would come to the clinic and the wait time was upwards of eight hours. We would also offer patients appointments for telephone assessments but not keep them. We were not meeting the mandate of optimizing patients prior to surgery.

 In the role of Patient Care Manager, I navigated responsibilities of leadership and followership.  In this situation like most others, I had to use my leadership abilities to engage and include those who followed me to utilize their experience, expertise and knowledge to formulate plans, develop new workflows and design processes to accomplish the goals of the department and the organization.  The result was we were able to see all scheduled patients in a timely manner, the patient wait times were decreased from eight to four hours in keeping with industry standards.  Those with telephone assessment appointments received a call at the scheduled time. The most important aspect to this is not that I was the leader of the team, but in the role of follower and leader I utilized the strengths of the team, who effectively followed, and we were successful in meeting and surpassing the outlined goals.

Cox et al. (2010) described followership as an interactive role, and Whitlock (2013) explains it as appropriate skills and behaviours for optimized performance, which contributes to upholding organizational development. Followers are generally actively engaged in the work and provide critical constructive feedback to leaders in order to make informed decisions. (Macrothink Institute, 2013)

** Leadership Lesson**

Yung & Tasi (2013) believes that followership is the mirror image of leadership and leaders would be nonexistent without the support of their followers. While there are some decisions that have to be made by the managers and leaders in an organization, there should always be consideration given to engaging followers to provide the feedback and input before many decisions are finalized. Having experience allow us as leaders to have context, however if we are not directly operationalizing what has been decided upon, it is imperative to include our followers. When we don’t, the results achieved are usually of poor quality because we do not have the frontline insight. Most importantly when we continue with hierarchical decision making, we alter the departmental and organizational culture to one of low trust, skepticism, high attrition and overall poor outcomes.

In large organizations we are not able to seek everyone’s input, however we need to have a representative group, and we should not only choose those who generally agree with us because that does not allow for checks and balances. Liz Wiseman (2017) advises us as leaders to encourage debate among team members for effective problem-solving and to find creative solutions to challenges. Reingold and Yang (2007) encourages us to be inclusive of formal and informal relationships and networks, because we need to understand our Organizational Quotient (OQ) in order to achieve success.