An effective platoon leader in the military may have years of training and exper

Question

An effective platoon leader in the military may have years of training and experience, but if her soldiers do not trust her or follow her commands effectively, a critical mission can be easily compromised. A successful coach of a sports team may improve the overall performance of his team, but without talented and committed players, championships can be hard to come by. In business, the leader often receives praise for success, even though the other members of a group or organization—the followers—are likely more important to achieving that success. What are the qualities of those followers who contribute to the success of an organization? Your analysis of how followers can influence the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of leaders Hint: Your analysis should consider how the "followers" empower or enable the leader’s behaviors (for good or bad). Your analysis of how followers can effectively work with a leader with a style that is not consistent with what they desire or a leader they do not admire, which is the more difficult scenario! Your recommendations for how leaders can better empower and support followers to ensure that they can meet goals.(600 words)

Explanation / Answer

We often talk about the traits and distinguishing characteristics of a leader and what qualities must individual posses in order to be a good and effective leader. But what we end up ignoring is that fact that a leader is nothing without his/her followers. The success of a leader directly depends on his/her followers and if the followers of a leader are not able to follow the directions of a leader and are not able to tread down the path that has been shown by the leader then the leader will not be able to achieve the desired results despite having all the unique characteristic traits and personality features of being a good and effective leader. Such a leader will be not be labeled as a good leader.

Followers are people who leaders lead. Leaders depend on followers and followers depend on leaders. Followers are subordinates and as subordinates followers are placed on a lower rung in the hierarchy ladder. As such followers have less power, less authority, and a lower level of influence than the leaders. Just like leaders the role of followers are inherently a valuable position within different entities be it a business entity or a health care entity or a government entity.

The qualities of a follower is defined by the following traits and personality characteristics that a follower usually possess –

(i) The courage to support the leader – A follower has the ability, knowledge and skill to support the leader in all the right and correct decisions and in decisions that will lead to incremental value creation and addition.

(ii) The courage to assume responsibility for common purpose – The followers work together as a united team so that the goals, objectives and purpose being pursued by a leader is achieved. The followers are intelligent enough to identify which goals and objectives are realistic and achievable and after identifying the goals they work together to support the leader in his/her pursuit of the goals, objectives and purposes.

(iii) The courage to challenge the behavior of the leader – A leader is not always right and followers should have the knowledge, vision, foresight and courage to challenge the leader when the leader is wrong. A leader cannot always be right and there are times when a leader can make a wrong decision. In such a scenario a follower should not follow the leader blindly but should inform the leader about his/her mistake in a fearless manner.

(iv) The courage to participate in any form of transformation – In many cases leaders will introduce paradigm changes when seeking a goal and objective. This may require followers to transform the way they do things and the way they implement things. Followers are required to be flexible and if they are rigid they will not be able to embrace the paradigm shift being introduced by the leader.

(v) The courage to make a moral stand when faced with ethical dilemmas – Seldom a leader can make (ignorantly or due to a difficult situation) unethical decisions. In such a scenario a follower has to stand up to the leader and make the leader realize that he/she is making an unethical decision and that such a decision will not be beneficial in the long run.

Thus a follower is actually what determines the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of a leader. A follower who blindly follows a leader will encourage the leader to make poor business and managerial decisions and get away with it while a follower who has the skill, knowledge and talent that is required of him will not let the leader to make a poor decision.

Followers can effectively work with a leader with a style that is not consistent with what they desire or a leader they do not admire. This is because what matters to good followers in the end is the achievement of the end result, goal or purpose. A football team might not have a good and spirited coach but it has the best set of players who represent the team. The players will be motivated to win all their games despite the coach being a poor leader and despite the coach having poor strategic intent. Like football the activities in any organization or an entity is a team effort and followers strive to work effectively despite having a leader whose style is not consistent with what they desire.

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