Comparing and Contrasting, followership and servant leadership.

You must prepare a short essay Comparing and Contrasting, followership and servant leadership.

 ANSWER

Comparing and Contrasting Servant Leadership and Followership

Introduction

Servant leadership and followership have existed over the years. Followership and servant leadership have been considered as leadership philosophies that have been utilized in incorporating structure within organizations. Ideally, both ideas began in ancient times where people had to serve leaders who led them. Even in the current society, there are leaders and other people who are the followers both having similar and varying characteristics. To achieve mutual understanding and trust between followers and leaders, they both need to understand that they cannot achieve a common objective without each other. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the concepts of servant leadership and followership.

Servant leadership mainly pays attention to the growth and wellbeing of individuals and their communities (Doyle, 2018). Therefore, the servant leaders are tasked with enabling growth and harnessing the abilities of employees. This is essential for improved performance and personal growth, which also benefits the organization or institution. Servant leaders are recognized for sharing their powers with the subjects since they give priority to the people and the needs of the employees to optimize task completion and effective performance (Doyle, 2018). Considerably, this demands time and commitment for one to become an effective and successful servant leader.  Being a servant leader means that one is willing to help others and prioritize others’ needs above his own. Therefore, the leadership philosophy, which is the chief objective of a servant leader is to serve others.

On the other hand, followership entails taking the right direction and supporting the organizational goals and programs. Followership illustrates the actions of an individual in a subordinate role and is willing to cooperate in working towards the achievement of the defined goals while showing a high interactive leadership process (Cotter-Lockard, 2017). Followers are mandated to listen to their leaders and show commitment towards the achievement of the anticipated goals. Ideally, a follower means that an individual is part of the team that has been obliged with delivering the set objectives for the specific organization.

A purposeful follower has the capability and confidence to question anything that they feel is not being done in the right way rather than just accepting and complying (Cotter-Lockard, 2017). Relatively, they can courageously express their needs and opinions to their leaders for effective changes and improvements. Therefore, followership entails the ability to take direction and getting in line with the actions to be a team member who will deliver what is expected. Followers offer opinions to leaders and enable them make effective decisions.

Ideally, servant leadership and followership are all leadership philosophies that express leadership in two different ways. This is because servant leadership and followership demonstrate more responsible leadership positions. They illustrate the ability to function and follow effectively in a group. In an organization, everyone is a leader and a follower, depending on the situation. For instance, may take followership may take a backseat for leadership to facilitate effective performance. Both followers and leaders have shown that they need each other to accomplish the required tasks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, followership and servant leadership are interdependent. Servant leaders exist to lead the followers, while followers serve leaders by offering their ideas and opinions to make effective decisions. Followership and servant leadership play a great role in the growth of people and building a community. Therefore, servant leaders and followership though different, they share some similarities in improving organization or institution performance.

References

Cotter-Lockard, D. (2017). Authentic Leadership and Followership: International Perspectives (2nd ed.). Basingstoke, England: Springer.

Doyle, L. J. (2018). Come, Follow Me!: The Relationship Between Followership, Leadership, and Implicit Followership Theories in Nonprofit Leaders (2nd ed.).