Leadership and followership in higher education

Leadership scholars' theorizing shifts over time as new knowledge unfolds. One of the major trends that has been underway is moving away from viewing leading as a function of a role or an individual. Once leadership was recognized as a quality demonstrated by individuals and groups as it flowed among the various participants, position became only one way to lead with greater opportunity for leadership being present across the continuum of followership and leadership.

Two former college presidents, W. Joseph King and Brian C. Mitchell offered their views in Leadership Matters: Confronting the Hard Choices Facing Higher Education. Facing the question of how hard presidencies have become, they propose that the current era is tough but that higher education has faced other significant dark days such as the Civil War and the Great Depression. They describe three styles of leadership: the Ceremonial Mayor, the Bull in a China Shop, and the Strategist. They clearly identify more with the Strategist but anyone who has worked in higher education can recall all three styles in presidents they have observed. Although King and Mitchell talk about shared governance as a unique attribute of U.S. higher education, they rely on a positional notion of leading rather than a followership to leadership continuum.

 

Steve Titus and Patrick Sanaghan tapped into the evolution of leadership scholarship in their essay on the importance of good followership in higher education. They addressed the problem that many scholars have confronted - that following is a word that doesn't have a great deal of panache or cache. Titus and Sanaghan answer this by advocating that following be recognized as a distinctive and essential quality necessary to navigating toward a better future for higher education. Further, they offer the following commitments that institutions can make to elevate the importance of followership on campus:

• I believe in your honesty and integrity as a leader.
• I have faith in your genuine commitment to the mission, values and shared vision of this institution.
• I can speak candidly and respectfully about any important reservations or concerns I have about the decisions being made.
• I believe that you sincerely value my contribution and role.
• You keep me meaningfully informed about what's going on, where we are headed and why we are going there (especially when things aren't going well!).

These are useful ideas and are helpful as a way to honor followership. However, the focus on leading as an individual act will not get the job done. Followership and leadership has to be recognized as two ends of a continuum on which all participants move throughout group and organizational life. And, while leadership engagement is important, perhaps followership is the most critical variable when it comes to organizations doing the right thing and doing it well.

The pivotal point that makes followership so important is that leadership has to be enabled. Followership enables good leadership and it must thwart bad leadership by courageously stepping forward to challenge bad ideas or destructive motivations. Bad leading is allowed by complicity of followers who are not engaged or committed enough to question authority. Challenging authority is not easy and those individuals who step forth know the risks involved; that's why shared, pervasive, and active followership among many is that much more important.