Followership: An Important Partner of Leadership

Followership is the mirror image of leadership. After all, an underlying truth is that leaders would be nonexistent without the support of their followers. To some extent, the relationship between leaders and followers resembles a miniature democracy. Thus, followership should be credited as leadership. The purpose of this article was to review related literature concerning followership and to draw attention to this area because it is argued that good followership serves as an important resource for organizational development. First, the definition of followership is reviewed. Next, the qualities of good followers are examined. Then a path to effective followership is suggested.