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Sharing the Limelight: Balancing Leader-Centric Teaching with Followership
Laura Paglis Dwyer
University of Evansville, USA
Volume 14: 2021, pp. 59-70; ABSTRACT
Leadership is a social influence process in which leaders and followers work in partnership to support an organization’s mission and values. Yet the way leadership is taught places nearly exclusive emphasis on only one side of this relationship; namely, students learn about the traits and behaviors of effective leaders. Followers, to the extent they are considered at all, are typically conceptualized in a mostly passive role, as subordinates who are the targets of the leader’s influence. Neglecting the role of followers, and specifically, the consequential impact different kinds of follower behavior can have, conveys an implicit message that leaders matter a lot and followers don’t much at all. The exercise described herein addresses this imbalance. Its objective is to help students develop a greater appreciation for the critical, complementary role followers play alongside leaders in organizations, as well as learning the specific behaviors and attitudes of “exemplary” followers.
