The Seattle Seahawks organization has been very successful because it has both an effective leader, head coach Pete Carroll, and effective followers. The integrity the team has for one another is special. When the quarterback tells the receiver to go left, the receiver trust him, he goes left and trusts the ball will be there. Without that trust, the situation could potentially cause injury to the player. The statistics the team had this past season speaks for itself. The team not only attained their goal, but went over and beyond it in a Superbowl win against the NFL best team. Under Pete Carroll’s leadership, the team dominated a game that will go down in history as one of the greatest. I did not care who won the Superbowl, so don’t hate me Denver fans, this is just an example.
The attributes of a follower are just as important as the leader in leadership situations (Northouse 2013). How a leaders skill set and behavior effect the follower are very intricate. When followers feel the human skills or people skills of a leader are not beneficiary, problems may arise. For example, if an effective follower in an organization continues to get bombarded with tons of work, so much that he is struggling to meet deadlines; a leader with human skills should understand the situation and deal with it accordingly. The outcome should be satisfying for both leader and follower. A leader who does not possess human skills in this particular situation would tell him to deal, or simply do nothing at all. That situation may eventually stress the follower, putting the goals of the organization in jeopardy.
The Skills Approach Models – List of Skills (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2012), incorporates the skills of the follower as well as the leader. Going as far back as the “Great Man” theories, research focused on the traits that differentiated leaders from followers. Findings showed that effective leadership resulted from the relationship between leader and follower (Northouse, 2013). Can a follower have the same set of skills as the leader? If so, how would we distinguish a leader from a follower, by title only?
References
Northgate, P. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2012). Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies
Your question is pertinent to an ongoing discussion about how to distinguish leaders and followers and what makes each one play their roles. In your post you touched upon the skills and trait approaches (Northouse, 2013) on leadership and brought an interesting discussion about leadership as a process in which leaders and followers are intricately related.
Please allow me to try to answer your question.
Could followers have the same skill set of leaders? My answer to you is a resounding “yes” based on two principles: free will and ego.
First, there is free will. More than genetics, traits, skills, or situations, what drives a person to be a leader and another to be a follower is basically their freewill. If you believe leadership demands a certain set of skills, your motivation will put you in route to acquire such skills. If you think that certain types of situation determines the leader, then you can either wait for the situation to appear before you or you can go ahead and create it for your own life. If you think leadership is based on traits, although some might say there is nothing to do about it then, I say that knowing yourself is the initial step to understand your predispositions and overcome them. What determines in first instance a position of leaders and followers is the willingness of each participant to play that given role.
Second, looking at leadership as a process in which the leader influences the followers is rather limiting. In our current state of affairs, power has shifted from hierarchy to knowledge and from stasis to constant changes. At least in most Western societies there are increasingly contexts in which this asymmetrical influence relationship has become nonexistent (Drath, 2008). If leadership is a process, it means by construct that it entails a two-way relationship – leaders influence followers; followers influence leaders. This means that another component is at play, apart from free will, to separate leaders and followers: the ego.
If leadership is a dynamic process in which influence is exerted in both ways, that means that the role of leader and follower will be constantly changing, depending on the issue being tackled, the skills of the team, the traits of the people in the team, the environment surrounding the team.
Using a different sport analogy, in a soccer field, any player can lead the team to an attack position and to a goal. What determines who is leading is the position in which the ball was taken and the tactic configuration of the team in that very moment. Now, being able to do so requires that each player let go off his own ego, for it is not his position that determines the player he is. If an attack player cannot let go off his ego and denies playing the role of a defensive player when the defender carried the ball to the opposite field, the team as a whole is not functioning properly.
Answering your question, leaders and followers may have the same skill set and their position as leader or follower will be determined by their free will and their capacity not to let their egos overshadow the common purpose (Kriyananda, 2012) that the team, not the leader, created.
References:
Drath, W. H. (2008). Issues & observations: Leadership beyond leaders and followers. Leadership in Action, 28: 20–24. doi: 10.1002/lia.1265
Kriyananda, S. (2012). Leadership is no ego game. Businessline. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1323024925?accountid=13158
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
First, I completely agree with the role of followers in any situation. Regardless of traits or behaviors of the leader, if the traits and behaviors of the followers are not complimentary, there should be an expectation of failure. I am going to attempt to continue your football metaphor, but I am lacking in my own technical knowledge of the game, so please bear with me! For example, if the Pete Carroll left the Seahawks and decided to go coach the Texans (who are apparently the winner of the biggest losers of 2014), would a Seahawk victory in the 2014/2015 season, under a new coach, change the way you viewed Carroll’s previous leadership? This question is actually more complicated and involved than it seems at first glance because it, not only, shows the Seahawks being successful under a new leader, but it also shows Pete Carroll’s leadership being ineffective to change the course of the Texans, as they remain on the bottom of the heap for 2015. These questions can also go to Sammy.
If a leader can only be effective with the cooperation, skills and traits of the followers being complimentary to their leadership, then gauging a group’s success based solely on the leader, is unfair. Take the Atlanta Falcons. They have only been to The Big Game once in 50-odd years. After a terrible 1997 season, the owners made changes and brought in a new coach for 1998. That year they were undefeated at home and they went to the Super Bowl (where they lost). The next year they were back to losing more than winning. So, in this situation, is the leader (the coach) the problem? Or is it the followers? Or the situation? Why did a change in the coach for the 1998 season create a change in their record and why didn’t the change stick around in 1999 or 2000? Could the leaders actually be the owners, as Sammy suggested? Could the ineffective leadership of the franchise, as a whole, be causing the sub-optimal performance on the field?
When we consider success within a sports franchise, I think it is fair to say that the fans, the team and the coaches judge success by wins. I think it is also fair to say that the franchise owners may judge success by a combination of wins and profits, with profits being of more import and not always directly related to the performance record. This directly relates to the utility of a situation in a comprehensive assessment of leadership, which is not taken into account when leadership is gauged from the perspective of skill and traits, alone (Northouse, 2013). Football, like anything else, is a multi-faceted situation with effectiveness being measured from many different angles. The coach is only one part of an equation that also needs other variables to be accounted for. In football, it seems that there may be many leaders; the coach, the owners, the quarterback, and a potential wildcard of an influential emergent leader who could alter the course of the team.
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
You wrote a great piece, and I agree with all that you wrote, except on who deserves the credit for their recent success. While Carroll most definitely had a hand in it, it’s a real shame that the real people for the Seahawks success don’t get the credit. Paul Allen, the owner of the Seattle Seahawks and General Manager John Schneider in my opinion are the real leaders of that organization. Pete Carroll was a man on the run from USC, knowing that major sanctions were about to be slapped on USC, which ended up being some of the most severe penalties ever handed out by the NCAA. Reggie Bush had to give back his 2005 Heisman Trophy and the USC Trojans had to vacate victories under Carroll’s guidance, including the 2004 BCS title (“NCAA delivers postseason football ban”).
Pete Carroll was damaged goods, and Paul Allen decided to take a chance on him anyway, and the new GM John Schneider built a roster around Carroll’s coaching strength, being a players coach. Pete Carroll has a grasp on the human skill, which is knowledge about and ability to work with people (Leadership Interactive Ebook Theory and Practice., 2012). The General Manager used his conceptual skills, and with the owners open check book, he built a team to suit Carroll’s strengths as a coach, and it won them a Super Bowl title this year.
“NCAA delivers postseason football ban.” ESPN.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2014. .
Leadership Interactive Ebook Theory and Practice.. (2012). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.