Summary

The article emphasizes the critical role of followership in business, highlighting the necessity for leaders to evoke feelings of significance, community, and excitement among their subordinates to transform them into engaged followers.

Abstract

The article "Why Followership Is Important for Your Business" delves into the often-overlooked concept of followership, asserting that effective leadership hinges on the ability to cultivate a follower base. It references Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones' work, which identifies three key emotional responses that leaders must inspire: a sense of significance, a sense of community, and a sense of excitement. These responses are crucial for subordinates to become true followers, contributing to the strength and success of an organization. The article underscores that leadership is not just a position but an interactive role that depends on the mutual relationship between leaders and followers. It concludes with the idea that understanding followers is more important for leaders than the other way around, and that a shared direction and sense of community are foundational for collective achievement.

Opinions

Leaders must make subordinates feel significant, fostering loyalty and integrity through recognition of their contributions.
A sense of community is vital, as it creates unity of purpose and human connection within an organization, transforming subordinates into followers.
Excitement is a key emotional response that leaders should inspire, providing challenges and a dynamic environment that followers find invigorating.
Leadership is an interactive role that is incomplete without followers; the acceptance and effectiveness of leadership are determined by the followers.
It is more important for leaders to understand their followers than for followers to understand their leaders, highlighting the importance of empathy and emotional intelligence in leadership.
The article suggests that the true measure of leadership is not just in the leaders' actions but in their ability to foster a supportive and motivating environment for their followers.

FOLLOWERSHIP IN BUSINESS

Why Followership Is Important for Your Business

Discover The Importance Of Three Emotional Responses

In an article entitled “Followership-It’s Personal, Too” (HBR, 2001), Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones highlighted three emotional responses that Leaders must tap into if a subordinate is to become a follower.

So what did they have to say and why is it important for your business?

Leader-Member Exchange

Firstly, let’s start with a quote by John Gardner:

“All over this country, corporation and government agencies, there are millions of executives who imagine that there place on the organisational chart has given them a body of followers. And of course it hasn’t. It has given them subordinates. Whether subordinates become followers depends on whether the executives act like leaders.” — John Gardner

I’ll repeat the key message in this statement in case you missed it:

“Whether subordinates become followers depends on whether the executives act like leaders.” — John Gardner

Good leadership is important, but a follower also plays an equally important role. All too often overlooked, followership is vital for the success of any organisation.

Why is this?

The strength of any team is held by its followers. There can be no leaders without followers. People seek, admire, and respect, that is they follow, Leaders who ignite three emotional responses within them:

Feelings of significance
Community, and
Excitement

To answer the question above, some Leaders and indeed organisational cultures overlook the importance of followership. Subordinates do not become followers unless the three emotional responses are met.

1. Feelings Of Significance

Followers will give their utmost, their hearts and souls to an authority figure, a Leader who says: “You really matter,” regardless of what the followers’ contribution may be.

This dynamic is engrained in the human drive to be valued. We yearn to not live and die in vain. We seek recognition. When leaders herald the significance of an individual’s work, the reward is loyalty, compliance and integrity of work.

2. Community

The second emotional response that followers want is a sense of community. Community forms when people feel a unity of purpose. A willingness to relate to one another as human beings.

Few business executives create such an environment.

When a feeling of community is successfully deployed, it can be deeply gratifying. Subordinates become followers. They see the person who created it as their Leader, in the truest sense of the word.

3. Excitement

Followers will tell you when a Leader they admire is nearby they get a buzzing feeling. A sense of excitement. People want excitement, a challenge, an edge in their lives.

Followers will feel Leadership from someone who Values them. Values their input. Leadership is therefore grounded in emotion, not just a title.

Final Thoughts

In addition to the three emotional responses, Goffee and Jones also left us with a few simple reminders to takeaway as to why followership is important for your Business:

Leadership is an interactive role
Leaders depend on followers and vice versa
Followers set the levels of acceptance for leadership
It’s more important for leaders to understand followers than for followers to understand leaders

People who share a common direction and sense of community can achieve their collective goal if they travel on the thrust of one another.

Reference

Harvard Business Review. (2020). Followership: It’s Personal, Too. [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2001/12/followership-its-personal-too [Accessed 16 Jan. 2020].