Justin Graves
LDRS 5454: Leadership in Diverse Contexts | Dr. Eric Kaufman
Applied Learning Reflection 3 Article: Follower-centered perspectives Blog
Part 1: What?
In this unit, we have focused on the follower-centered perspectives of leadership. Through this lens, we can focus more on the interactions that a leader has with their followers. I believe this will be my preferred unit of the course because I, too, believe that much attention should be given to the follower if one intends to facilitate a positive leader-follower relationship. My final paper will focus largely on follower-centered perspectives of leadership, specifically looking at how interpersonal relationships affect the likelihood that a follower will want to abide by the vision of the leader. My own definition of leadership borrows from how leadership can be defined as the ability to convince a group of followers to work toward a set of common goals (Northouse, 2013), how the study of leadership has proven that it requires effective communication and valuable relationships (Jackson & Parry, 2011), and how there is always potential to be a more effective leader by highlighting certain strengths in certain instances in a developmental framework (Rath & Conchie, 2008).
Part 2: So What?
In Follower-Centered Perspectives on Leadership, Meindl mentions that “it is the followers rather than the leaders who construct both phenomenon of leadership and the images of specific leaders and hence both the emergence of leadership and its consequences are largely influenced by followers’ cognitive processes and inter-follower social influence processes (Meindl, 2006). I think that this definition of follower-centered leadership is spot-on and hits the nail on the head. There is great importance to be had in follower-centered perspectives of leadership because the assessment or “grading” of the leader is most likely going to be performed by the follower. If there is no buy-in from the follower and they are not actively involved in the relationship, there is no great opportunity for them to assimilate to the values, vision, or goals of the leader.
Part 3: Now what?
Through this unit, I feel particularly affirmed in my own definition of leadership that has been forming over the course of this semester. I truly believe that the follower-perspectives of leadership will be some that persist over the span of time due to the fact that leadership almost always has two things: a leader and a follower.
References
Jackson, B, & Parry, K. (2011). A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap
book about studying leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths based leadership: Great leaders, teams, and
why people follow. New York: Gallup Press.
Meindl, J. R. (2006). Follower-centered perspectives of leadership: A tribute to the
memory of James R. Meindl. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.