Leadership & Followership: Keys to Success in Organizations - Essay Sample

Introduction

One of the topics that I found interesting in the coursebook was Leadership and Followership. Through this topic, I gained tremendous insights regarding the concepts of leadership and followership within an organizational setting. Understandably, I learnt that the success of an organization depends on many factors. One of these factors is the leadership style used by the people at the managerial position within the organization. The leadership style is a factor that has enormous impacts on the subordinates and the followers (Leonard and Kelly 171). Good leadership styles entail those that are meant to integrate aspects such motivation as well as the development of appropriate culture, ethics, code of conducts and the norms. In this way, therefore, the managers need to adopt those leadership styles that help achieve the objective of the organization as well as the personal accomplishment of the subordinates or followers.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

For an organization to succeed, employees must be treated in a manner that makes them feel valued. In most cases, managers’ efforts are depicted through their leadership styles. The ability of the manager to lead will be determined and assessed by their abilities to earn followership from the people they lead. Thus, I realized that the use of participative leadership style was critical in enabling the employees to work towards achieving the objectives of the organization. Broadly, participative leadership involves the inclusion of the employees and the subordinates in the decision-making process within the organization (Leonard and Kelly174). A closer look at this method would reveal that it has both the positive and negative impacts on the followers. For example, if the employees are highly experienced, they feel motivated and can use their skill to embrace motivation to impress their leader. They can engage in valuable innovative processes that could be further integrated into the decision-making process. The method also eliminates the stress as well as the high level of job satisfaction among the employees.

Research has shown that participative leadership styles provides the opportunity for growth and consequently develop confidence among followers with less experience (Epitropaki et al. 124). In this sense, therefore, it is considered the ideal type of leadership that could be utilized by any leader. Various drawbacks, however, exists about this type of leadership. Notably, the decision-making could be delayed because of a long time used for consultation from each employee or followers.

Other types of leadership styles have also been discussed in the book. For example, the autocratic leaders often believe that the employees are highly skilled and experienced and therefore, must perform by expectations that are required of them and hence put a negative impact on them. This approach has been shown to have the worst effect on the growth of the company. It is based on the fact that the structure of its leadership does not create an appropriate platform through which employees’ talents can be utilized. For effective followership, thus, managers must, therefore, adopt and implement strategies that are aimed towards motivating employees to take part in the activities aimed at achieving the set goals. They can delegate duties and enhance motivation through recognition, rewards and performance appraisal.

Works Cited

Epitropaki, Olga, et al. "Leadership and followership identity processes: A multilevel review." The Leadership Quarterly 28.1 (2017): 104-129.

Leonard, Edwin C., and Kelly A. Trusty. Supervision: Concepts and practices of management. Nelson Education, 2015.