So far in this course, leadership, trait, and followership have been covered. Each aspect determines what kind of people are appropriate to be a leader and what kind of support the leader needs to exercise their power as a leader. In this assignment, I would like to dissect followership by referring to my experience of being part of school choir when I was a junior and senior high school student in Japan.
In Japan, there is a culture where the older are likely to be a leader unlike in the US where people with skills tend to be a leader in a group. In this situation, it is quite natural to see that third-grade students in a junior high and sophomores in a high school play a role as a leader, sub-leader, and part leaders of soprano, mezzo, and alto. As a follower, I saw some students were against the leader of the choir because the leader’s instructions did not go well with what the students wanted to do for a concert. Applying what the course material says, it is rational to say that this situation sees some alienated followers for being a “negative energy” for the leader (Northouse, 2022).
At the same time, however, the members also demonstrated traits of exemplary followers. When I worked as a part leader of soprano, for instance, all members in this part practiced by themselves to learn the tunes of a compulsory song for a competition while I had not told them to remember the tunes but just to listen to other choir singing the song. Moreover, the choir members even shared their thoughts on the status quo of the members’ performance and vocal production to let me broaden my knowledge about what other skills are needed to create music with other part. In this situation, I would conclude that these amazing peers were exemplary followers who, according to Northouse, demonstrate active participation skills and share helpful criticism (Northouse, 2022). Therefore, my peers of soprano were exemplary followers when I was a part leader of this part.
As written above, one cannot deny the possibility that people can sometimes be exemplary followers and other times be alienated or other kinds of followers depending on situations. Hence, one clever way for a leader is to see what members or followers want to do to accomplish a shared goal instead of focusing on the leader’s own want and goals.
Reference
Northouse, Peter G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and Practice. (9th ed., pp. 352-383). Sage.