Leadership has been the team building buzzword for the past 10 years and now Followership is about to take its place.

Never heard of it? Well it’s about to become the next big thing. Today on the Blue Glove Jobs Blog, we’re giving you an overview of Followership. What actually is it? Why is it important and why you need to embrace it in your workplace.

What actually is Followership?

Followership is a pretty straightforward concept.  Most simply, it is the ability to take direction well. It is the ability to get in line behind a program or task, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you. Followership is just as important as leadership if you want your organisation to run like a well-oiled machine. Followership may have taken the backseat to leadership but now it’s Followerships time to shine.

Why is Followership is important?

People don’t like being told that they are ‘good at following’. It has this unannounced stigma whereby people think they’re not able to take charge. People don’t like having the reputation of being a follower, everyone wants to be a leader. We understand that being called a ‘follower’ might not sit well with you if  you are going for a top role. Surely the person at the top needs to be a leader, right?

Wrong.  You simply cannot adopt more responsible leadership positions without demonstrating an ability to follow and function effectively in a group.

Why should you embrace it in the workplace?

Embracing Followership into the workplace is good for business.

If your organisation has a poor Followership,  problems manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals, unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues and weak competitiveness.  Having staff who are good followers isn’t a bad trait. Good, skilled followers are able to nurture good leadership, by invisibly helping keep a novice leader upright and on track.  A skilled follower helps an inexperienced leader to shine. As the leader grows in skill, he or she is then able to help the followers to shine. Resulting in your workplace and it’s staff becoming that well-oiled machine we all hope for.

Followership will always be the kid sister of leadership but there are no leaders without followers. It is hard to achieve success with those who can’t follow.  It is true that an organisation is only as good as its leaders but it is also only as good as its followers.