Followership

Followership refers to a role held by certain individuals in an organization, team, or group. Specifically, it is the capacity of an individual to actively follow a leader. Followership is the reciprocal social process of leadership. The study of followership (part of the emerging study of Leadership psychology) is integral to a better understanding of leadership, as the success and failure of groups, organizations, and teams is not only dependent on how well a leader can lead, but also on how well the followers can follow. Specifically, followers play an active role in organization, group, and team successes and failures. Effective followers are individuals who are considered to be enthusiastic, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant. The emergence of the field of followership has been attributed to the scholar Robert Kelley.

Kelley described four main qualities of effective followers, which include:

Kelley identified two underlying behavioral dimensions that help identify the difference between followers and non-followers. The first behavioral dimension is whether or not the individual is an independent, critical thinker. The second dimension is whether or not the individual is active or passive. From these dimensions, Kelley has identified five followership patterns, or types of followers:

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