Thinkers 50 Leadership: Organizational Success through Leadership

CHAPTER6

Followership

“Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power but by the capacity to increase the sense of power of those being led. The most essential work of the leader is to create more leaders,” observed the early management thinker Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933).¹

Follett was unusual. Initially, most leadership researchers focused on the leader—what were the leader’s traits, behavior, or styles, for example. Some, though, were keen to explore a different aspect of leadership: the relationship between the leader and the led. After all, without followers, there can be no leadership. And, as those who chose to examine the role of the follower understood, the dynamic between the leader and the follower plays an important role in ...