This leads to the question of whether a leader who chooses to adopt a "following" philosophy might be considered as weak. Hersey and colleagues almost address this point on page 341.
When you first encounter a prospective follower, before you say your first word you have already made a statement about yourself. Part of this statement involves body language in terms of how confidently you carry yourself, how you walk, and your general manner. Part of it involves the clothing you wear and your accessories. Grooming, neatness, hairstyle and other personal features also enter into the equation (Hersey et al, 341).
This concept of followership is often overlooked by senior management, when viewing and analyzing the behaviors of lower managers. It is sometimes seen as leading to internal individual resistance and can be used negatively to describe people behavior in the organization as not accepting the project contents and/or management. This may take covert or overt forms. It is common practice that management shortcuts individual resistance with destructive personality explanations, instead of checking for underlying reasons for resisting behavior.
The idea of leadership constituencies dates back to at least 1958, and is based on the idea that the leader/manager has multiple obligations to various groups that include subordinates, superiors, fellow managers, stockholders and other financial stakeholders, and the local and global community (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, & Rosenthal, 1964; Schell & Marmer-Solomon, 1997). With this large group of stakeholders, it is next to impossible to adopt any other management position besides that of being a "leader/follower
The leader of tomorrow will be one who will be able to lead or follow, whenever either one is the most suitable strategy for the moment. As Hersey and colleagues point out "The consequences for society of the imbalance between the development of technical and the development of social skills have been disastrous" (Hersey et al, 1996, 5).
One valid benefit that "followership" brings to a company is that it creates a system of open-book management, which, as the name implies, means opening the financial and operational statements to all employees. Many of today's most successful companies -- Yahoo! Dell Computers, America Online -- adopt a policy of teaching everyone how to read the company' s financial statements and learn how their function contributes to the company's profits. "There is no better way . . .to help employees contribute to a profitable business than to teach them what a profitable business means to them and to their specific areas (Harris, 1996, 46).
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