Synopsis
Static leadership is risky. It jeopardizes the organization’s success while intimidating the staff’s creativity, work culture, and sense of belonging. Instead, the wise application of the depersonalized leadership approach is the key to preventing failure and a toxic work environment.
Leadership and Followership: An Essential Interconnected Process
The process of leading and following rules in all relationships in which human beings are involved and its approach, either flexible or static, dramatically affects the outcome and the stability of the rapport, regardless of its personal or professional nature. Moreover, as leaders and followers justify each other’s existence, leadership and followership must be seen and experienced as a whole process.
The Concept of Depersonalized Leadership
Schools, just like all work realities, must strive to become a learning organization, allowing the vertical and lateral flow of knowledge and fostering systematic open discussion. Therefore, to be successful, schools’ leadership should ensure and sustain cultural and expertise shifts among all staff at all levels. In essence, despite their hierarchical authority, heads of learning institutions should be characterized by an open-minded attitude that focuses on “thoughtful listening, consideration and acceptance of opposing points of view”.
Work environments that allow these dynamics to happen systematically embody the principle of depersonalized leadership instead of the approach applied by the formal management model, which strictly operates according to static hierarchical structures and norms. Bodies supporting the depersonalized leadership recognize the interchangeable nature of the leading & following process; regardless of the structural framework, consequently leading & following is accepted as a “dynamic and interwoven relational process,”. By focusing on the process rather than on the roles, the diphthong er may be removed from the words leadership and followership, so to refer to leadship and followship as simultaneous or interchangeable human possibilities.
When Leadership does not get results – tips for reflection
Specific studies on the link between school leadership and education’s failure in the United States have led to the universal and present-day principle that an organization’s success depends on leadership quality; more explicitly, when schools fail to meet any of the assigned objectives, their leadership becomes the first suspect to be analyzed. Additionally, as effective leadership cannot happen in isolation, school heads should understand the need for “radical interdependence” among all players in the work community. Furthermore, employees are to be viewed and considered as human capital, as, in Mary Kay Ash’s words, they “are definitely a company’s greatest asset,”. Therefore, their voices are to be considered, although divergent with the possible highest hierarchic positions.
Recommendations
The intertwined relationship between leadship and followship leads to the principle that they are not mutually exclusive.
We all are leaders; we all are followers! Any daily setting is a unique opportunity to exercise both attitudes with awareness and pride. From family to work, there are moments where we can lead or follow, no matter the importance of the circumstances. It’s about training and improving an attitude. Children learn this in school by following the teacher’s instructions, leading a class project, or being a class rep. Eventually, for organizations to be effective, they should consider “leading and following as non-static human functions”.
References
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David A. Garvin, A. C. E. F. G., 2008. Is Yours a Learning Organization?. March, pp. 1-10.
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Malakyan, P. G., 2015. Depersonalizing Leadership and Follwership: The Process of Leadship and Followship. World Journal of Science Research, 2(2), pp. 227-250.
Reilly, D. H., 1986. Educational Leadership: the Missing Element. Education, 106(421-428).
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TED, 2019. A guide to collaborative leadership. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/lorna_davis_a_guide_to_collaborative_leadership
Tony Bush, L. B. D. M., 2019. Principales of Educational Leadership and Management. 3rd Edition ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
