Effective Follwership Series

A lot has been said and written about the importance of effective leadership and the role it plays in shaping the future of a nation and the world at large. Several articles, books and other materials have been developed and designed to help advance the leadership cause. Leadership is said to provide a vision and direction that makes a difference. However, little or no attention is given to the role EFFECTIVE FOLLOWER-SHIP plays in tandem with Effective Leadership. Fewer books and articles have been written to help followers fulfill their mission and when you find 500 books on leadership, you find only 1 on follower-ship. It is even more disheartening that leaders are seen as superior to followers and are more respected. The relationship that exists now amongst both is more like the master-servant relationship, where the leaders are the masters, while the follower is the servant.

 Contrary to the stereotypes earlier mentioned, followers play a very vital role in shaping the outcomes and results that are achieved within organizations. Scholars are beginning to explore, examine and study the characteristics of people called followers, and how their follower-ship influences and changes outcomes. Followers are as important as leaders and even play more significant roles in ensuring that their leaders are responsible and accountable.

 Effective follower-ship is a concept that suggests that followers actively participate in developing and designing strategies that will ensure progress. This concept promotes the thought that followers don't simply remain as figure heads in organizations who just say yes to every instruction without having to be able to make contributions. Effective follower-ship suggests that followers should be able to take proactive actions to promote and advance the cause of an organization. Despite the fact that most leaders will prefer to have "yes" followers, studies have shown that organizations that have followers who are challenged to think and contribute to the process do better than organizations where people just do nothing other than obey rules and regulations.

 Effective Follower-ship involves building collaborative and supportive relationships with leaders and other followers. One of the major roles of follower-ship is that followers exert influence on the leader in a confident and unemotional manner to help the leader avoid costly mistakes. The bottom line is that followers are as important as leaders, especially when followers actively participate in governance. To know how important followers are, one can take a look at the recent happenings in the Arab world. Citizens have demanded over and over again that their government become more accountable and have asked that their leaders step aside if they wouldn't provide the ideals, or create a better well being for the people.

Think about all that has been discussed here and imagine that Nigeria is the organization that obviously has leaders running things already. Followers (in these case citizens) can decide to play active roles by ensuring that leaders are accountable for their actions. We need a Nigeria where an education does not help people to only conform to the status-quo, rather an education and interactions help people to engage in productive and active reasoning, think and be creative. Followers must learn to begin to do things differently. I know I have not exhausted this subject but I must make it clear the message I intend to pass with this...the leaders matter, but effective follower-ship matters  even much more.

 God bless you