Followership Theory

This paper will discuss various theories, including leader-centric approach as well as follower-centric approach and investigate the relationship and interaction between these two parts of an equation to answer the question of “astute leadership practice requires followership” and to prove these two sides are like the yin and yen of successful leadership practice. Some personal experience regarding to these issues will be included along the essay with the aim of applying theoretical theories into real life.
In 2007, when talking about the definition of followership, Uhl-Bien and Pillai reckoned that if leadership means actively influencing people, then followership means allowing themselves to be affected by people who claim to be leaders.
As Bass (1985) reckoned that a transformational leader would motivate subordinates to do more than what they originally expected to do. This theory describes that leaders are a crucial instrument to build and foster follower commitment, challenge, inspire and motivate followers to achieve a better performance with higher efficiency. Transformational leaders emphasise on noticing followers’ individual needs and potentials and helping them grow and develop (Bass, Riggio, 2016). It is also identified with the Leader/Member Exchange Theory and the focal point is the personal development of followers or employees. Under this theory, followers are motived to reach higher achievements to obtain self-actualisation needs instead of low-level needs as discussed in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Working for these leaders, followers have the most precious opportunities to learn, to develop themselves, to be empowered, to be responsible for their own decisions within the firm. I suppose that acting as effective communicators, these leaders build and maintain the most close-knit relationship with their followers by enabling them to address issues and develop their own strategies, which gives them a sense of control. They build trust from their followers by willing to share internal, crucial information and encouraging them to give feedback in
Even though it is challenging to conclude whether leaders or followers are more important within an organisation, academic world have favoured leadership over followership, hence, the followership has been receiving much less attention. However, in recent years, the growing interest of academic researches towards followership theory has shed light on this other half of leader-follower equation, as a result, there is a growing body of theoretical academic paper discussing this. Follower-centric approach focuses on explaining the significant role of the follower in the process of building successful leaders. In this strand, leadership is viewed as “a social construction”, and leader existence is considered as the result of “the cognitive, attributional, and social identity processes of followers” (Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R., Lowe, K. and Carsten, M. (2014). This approach did not assign an active role to followers, it indicates that followers’ perceptions, characteristics, preferences or attitudes can shape or even restrain leadership processes in a passive