Effective Followership Research Articles

Perceptions of followership among nurses: A qualitative study

BackgroundFollowership is defined as the role individuals play in supporting, contributing to, and realizing the vision and directives set by their leaders. Such a role is indispensable in healthcare, facilitating effective team dynamics and healthcare delivery. Within the nursing field, it encompasses nurses' active engagement and participation in healthcare delivery, ensuring safety, fostering teamwork, and enhancing patient outcomes. Despite its significance, the exploration of followership within the nursing context of Saudi Arabia remains limited. ObjectiveThis study aims to explore how followership is perceived and practiced by nurses in this unique cultural and professional setting, and its implications for healthcare delivery. MethodsWe conducted a qualitative inquiry involving seven registered nurses working in hospitals affiliated with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and a thematic analysis was utilized to extract key findings. ResultsOur thematic analysis identified four main themes and several sub-themes that encapsulate the participants' perspectives on followership. The themes include: (1) Understanding of followership, where a predominant lack of clarity about the concept was observed, often conflating it with teamwork; (2) Followers' involvement in decision-making, highlighting the limited participation of nurses in decision-making processes due to hierarchical and autocratic leadership structures; (3) Barriers to followership, which encompassed issues such as poor leadership, the undervaluation of the follower role, lack of training and development opportunities, challenges in collaboration, and language barriers; and (4) Facilitators of followership, identified as effective leadership, followership training, communication skills, positive relationships, respect, collaboration, understanding of roles, commitment, and flexibility. These findings elucidate the complex landscape of followership within the nursing profession in Saudi Arabia, revealing both the challenges and pathways to fostering effective followership in healthcare settings. Conclusion and ImplicationsThis study reveals a widespread lack of awareness about followership among nurses in Saudi Arabia, highlighting significant challenges related to hierarchy and the undervaluation of the follower role in nursing practice and education. It underscores the need for educational and training interventions that redefine and elevate the role of followership in clinical settings to enhance collaboration, assertiveness, and decision-making skills. Moreover, the study advocates for the re-evaluation of leadership practices to better acknowledge and value followership, promoting a more flattened hierarchy that encourages active participation in patient care and organizational development. Implementing these changes could improve patient outcomes and increase nurse satisfaction by effectively addressing the identified barriers related to hierarchy and leadership.

Effective Followership and Organizational Performance of Belema Oil Producing Limited in Rivers State

Effective Followership and Organizational Performance of Belema Oil Producing Limited in Rivers State

In Search of an Ideal Christian Follower in Modern Organizations

This paper offers fresh ways of thinking and perceiving the importance of effective followership in the context of modern organizations and Christian discipleship. It reviews the extant literature on the concept of followership to advance the importance of the follower role in modern organizations. Specifically, we examine the meaning of followership in modern organizations and the role and qualities of an ideal follower. We argue that followership is a self-conscious choice by the follower to actively partner with the leader to advance the organizational mission and objectives. We also discuss how Christian workers can blend biblical discipleship and organizational followership in the workplace to reflect their calling as true disciples and, in the process, benefit the organization. We propose a model for the authentic Christian follower, which can be further explored.

Effective Following: A Counterpart to Leadership

Effective Following: A Counterpart to Leadership

How Team Members' Transformational Leadership and Effective Followership Work During Team Interactions

In the current study, a mixed‐method research design was used to explore how team members' transformational leadership and effective followership relate to teamwork quality. Data were collected from 10‐student project teams (N [team] = 10; N [individual] = 84 team members) in a leadership class at a large‐sized public university in the United States. As a follow‐up, focus group interviews were conducted with two teams (n = 13 team members) to explore how team members' transformational leadership and effective followership work during team interactions. Correlation results showed that team members' transformational leadership was positively related to teamwork quality (r (82) = .84, p < .01). In the qualitative phase, findings showed that the team exhibiting centralized transformational leadership also exhibited passive team followership and low‐quality teamwork. Low‐quality teamwork was described as social loafing and polarization. In contrast, the team exhibiting shared transformational leadership also exhibited proactive team followership and high‐quality teamwork. High‐quality teamwork was described as conflict resolution and team synergy. The findings have important implications for leaders, followers, leadership educators, teams, organizations, and researchers.

Getting Ahead While Getting Along: Followership as a Key Ingredient for Shared Leadership and Reducing Team Conflict.

Followership and leadership provide two distinct but complementary sets of behaviors that jointly contribute to positive team dynamics. Yet, followership is rarely measured in shared leadership research. Using a prospective design with a sample of leaderless project teams, we examined the interdependence of leadership and followership and how these leader-follower dynamics relate to relationship conflict at the dyadic and team level. Supporting the reciprocity of leader-follower dynamics, social relations analyses revealed that uniquely rating a teammate higher on effective leadership was associated with being rated higher by that same person on effective followership. Additionally, team members with a reputation as an effective leader also tended to be viewed as an effective follower. As expected, team levels of leadership were tightly linked to team levels of followership. Connecting these results to relationship conflict at the dyadic level, we found that uniquely rating someone as an effective follower or an effective leader would decrease the likelihood of experiencing interpersonal conflict with that person and that having a reputation for effective followership or effective leadership relates negatively to being viewed as a conflict hub within the team. Finally, effective followership was significantly negatively related to team levels of conflict, but we did not find a significant relation between effective leadership and relationship conflict at the team level. Our results highlight that followership is not only a necessary ingredient for high levels of shared leadership to exist within a team, but it underpins more functional team interactions.

How Followership Boosts Creative Performance as Mediated by Work Autonomy and Creative Self-Efficacy in Higher Education Administrative Jobs.

Followership is an important but understudied domain. This study adopted a follower-centric perspective to examine the internal process by which followership affects creative performance via work autonomy and creative self-efficacy. The study employed a 3-wave survey of 341 employees of a Taiwanese university to achieve the research purpose. This study showed that effective followership (Time 1) is positively associated with employees’ work autonomy (Time 1) and creative self-efficacy (Time 2). Work autonomy and creative self-efficacy mediate the relationship between effective followership and creative performance (Time 3). This study’s empirical findings provide an improved way of measuring followership and broaden our understanding of how followership triggers intrinsic motivation to facilitate creative performance.

Building Individual and Organizational Wellness Through Effective Followership

Burnout is widespread across the healthcare industry. Physician burnout has been linked to significant decrements in personal wellness, patient satisfaction, patient outcomes, and organizational financial losses. Appropriately, burnout has been identified as an important issue for leaders in the field as it can lead to physician turnover and loss of talent. In this article, we address how burnout is related to followership. We assert that physicians can utilize effective followership to increase wellness not only for themselves, but also for their leaders and organizations.

Followership: The Missing Link in Surgical Leadership.

Followership: The Missing Link in Surgical Leadership.

Harnessing Followership to Empower Graduate Medical Education Trainees.

Followership is the leadership practiced by individuals who are in positions of responsibility without authority, whereby they exert their influence to help execute the vision of their leaders. The central principle of followership is a commitment to actively support leaders and organizations. Without effective followers, organizations flounder, decision-making lies only at the top echelons, and plans are either incompletely executed or not executed at all. In this perspective, we introduce the concept of followership as an important part of leadership development. We explore pedagogical methods for teaching graduate medical education (GME) trainees the followership tenets of service, assuming responsibility, and challenging leadership as necessary skills to achieve partnership with their leaders. We argue that developing followership skills, specifically partnering skills, can help trainees excel as leaders and attendings. GME trainees who practice effective followership take initiative by co-managing their patients with their attendings. By displaying both willingness to serve and challenge their leaders, they add to the success of the whole unit. Followership is a skill that can be learned. Learners should reflect on their own followership style and identify areas for flexibility and growth. Those seeking to become partners should solicit explicit feedback, observe their role models, and seek opportunities to role play situations that highlight the difficulties of followership. Partnership allows for development of a space between leaders and followers to experience empathy, reward ownership, and grow leaders.

How followers create leaders: The impact of effective followership on leader emergence in self-managing teams.

How followers create leaders: The impact of effective followership on leader emergence in self-managing teams.

Followership in health care clinicians: a scoping review protocol.

The main objective of this scoping review is to identify and map followership literature in order to understand the current state of followership research in relation to health care clinicians. Health care clinicians need to be flexible in switching between leader and follower roles as appropriate to advance patient care; however, much of the research effort in this regard has primarily concentrated on leadership. Effective followership in health care organizations may be necessary to enhance clinical team performance in order to improve patient safety and quality of care. There have been increasing calls in the literature recommending research of followership in the provision of health care. Thus, it is important to synthesize the available evidence on followership to identify what has been studied and highlight research gaps in this area. The review will focus on followership in health care clinicians. Only studies with participants who are health care clinicians will be included. The review will include studies of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods designs; systematic reviews; and meta-analyses. The search will include JBI Evidence Synthesis, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CINAHL, MEDLINE, EPPI-Centre, Scopus, and Epistemonikos. In addition, unpublished or gray literature will be searched in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global and Google Scholar. No limits on date or language will be applied to the search. Data will then be extracted from included papers by three independent reviewers. Results from extracted data will be presented in tabular form accompanied by a narrative summary.

Cardiac Arrest And Resuscitation

The ultimate goal of cardiac resuscitation is full neurologic recovery; however, the probability of achieving this goal deteriorates rapidly with each minute of cardiac arrest. The most essential steps are rapid recognition of cardiac arrest, early high-quality chest compressions with minimal interruptions, and early defibrillation. Additional key components include effective leadership and followership, appropriate airway management, and effectual investigation for possible reversible causes of the arrest. This review discusses the role of and evidence for using pharmacologic agents. Additional discussion evaluates the use of ultrasonography and end-tidal CO2 in cardiac arrest resuscitation. Lastly, this review discusses cardiac arrest in special circumstances, such as patients who are pregnant, have left ventricular assist devices, or are subjects of trauma. This review contains 6 figures, 4 tables and 102 references. Key words: advanced cardiovascular life support, antidysrhythmics, asystole, cardiac arrest, basic life support, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, pulseless electrical activity, resuscitation, ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia

The Army Paradox: Leader and Follower Education.

The United States Air Force and the Army's Command and General Staff School use case studies to educate students about their responsibilities to exercise moral courage and effective followership in their military units. This chapter examines followership training and education at different levels within the US Army, both in professional military education schools, as well as in doctrine. We contrast the hierarchical relationships of military organizations and cultures with the need to empower and trust followers. We conclude with instructions on applying the methods the military uses to develop effective followers and provide recommendations for further improvement.

Using Storytelling to Teach Effective Followership.

This chapter examines the craft of storytelling for the purpose of developing followers and exploring leader-follower transitions, while offering storytelling methods, classroom activities, and critical components of crafting a story. Through stories about the American Civil Rights icon, Mrs. Rosa Parks, and an unfamiliar Civil Rights activist, Sister Madeline Dorsey, a humble leader turned effective follower, it is possible to more easily appreciate the reflexive transition of follower to leader and leader to follower.

Relationship Between Middle Managers' Transformational Leadership and Effective Followership Behaviors in Organizations

In the current study, four hypotheses that predicted positive relationships between transformational leadership behaviors and effective followership behaviors were proposed. Data were collected from 100 middle managers across the United States. Multiple regression results showed significant positive relationships between transformational leadership behaviors and effective followership behaviors, after controlling for age, sex, race, educational level, tenure with current organization, and tenure with current supervisor. However, the transformational leadership behavior of Idealized Influence was not significantly related to the effective followership behavior of Building Trust, after controlling for demographics. The findings have important implications for leaders, followers, leadership educators, organizations, and researchers.

Indicators of Effective Followership for Teachers under the Local Administrative Organization, Thailand: The Structural Relationship Model

This study aims to examine the consistency of the structural relationship model developed from both related theories and previous studies. Key components, sub-components and related indicators were examined by descriptive method. Sample sizes were controlled by the ratio between sample units and number of parameters as 20:1. A total of 31,026 samples were collected. All samples were teachers who were teaching at schools under the jurisdiction of local administration in Thailand. The questionnaire was used as a 5-level rating scale with 0.979 reliability. Results were based on related hypothesis, WIE model, participatory measurement model (PAR), and critical measurement model (CRT), respectively. The Measurement of Integrity (INT) and FOLL (Good User-Conduct Modeling) models were consistent with those previous studies. The key components, sub-components and indicators were also loaded according to the criteria.

Refocusing Nursing's Lens on Followership.

The nursing profession has long acknowledged the importance of leadership and like many other professions has been criticized as "leader-centric." The role of leadership is to influence followers towards a common goal. Leaders, therefore, must have a clear understanding of followership, including the factors that promote followers' effectiveness and engagement. They must be able to identify following and non-following behaviours, and they must practice leadership styles that support effective followership. Although nurse authors in the 1980s and early 1990s advocated for the inclusion of followership in nursing education and practice, the role has received little attention. Currently, it is not included in standards and guidelines, and there are few nursing research studies on this topic. Our understanding of leadership is incomplete without also understanding followership; without the following role, there is no leadership role. The purpose of this article is to focus the lens on followership, clarify what it is, outline the different styles, explain the importance of the role to nursing and offer recommendations that guide its integration into the nursing profession.

Cardiac Arrest And Resuscitation

The ultimate goal of cardiac resuscitation is full neurologic recovery; however, the probability of achieving this goal deteriorates rapidly with each minute of cardiac arrest. The most essential steps are rapid recognition of cardiac arrest, early high-quality chest compressions with minimal interruptions, and early defibrillation. Additional key components include effective leadership and followership, appropriate airway management, and effectual investigation for possible reversible causes of the arrest. This review discusses the role of and evidence for using pharmacologic agents. Additional discussion evaluates the use of ultrasonography and end-tidal CO2 in cardiac arrest resuscitation. Lastly, this review discusses cardiac arrest in special circumstances, such as patients who are pregnant, have left ventricular assist devices, or are subjects of trauma. This review contains 6 figures, 3 tables and 101 references Key words: advanced cardiovascular life support, antidysrhythmics, asystole, cardiac arrest, basic life support, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, pulseless electrical activity, resuscitation, ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia

Wanted: Effective Followers in Surgery.

This SURGICAL PERSPECTIVE paper brings to our readers the general topic of "followership." Leadership has received a lot of attention in the administrative education domain; however, there is a history of academic research on the role and importance of the effective follower. We review some of the critical articles in this field, and present a possible approach for incorporating the notion of effective followership in a surgical context.