Craig McKenzie
LDRS 1015
Kelley Woods-Johnson
Evolution on Leadership
Leadership
has indeed changed over time as a result of societies pressures and constant
redefining of the meaning of leadership. From Carlyle to Tolstoy to Aristotle
to Ghandi, it would be foolish to think that the idea of an ideal leader has
not changed. However, as little as society may have thought about it, the role
of the follower and citizen has changed as a result of the evolving leader.
While
society has changed its viewpoint on leadership, citizenship, and followership
over thousands of years, in the course of the semester, my view on leadership
has also changed. While at the beginning of the semester I viewed leadership,
followership, and citizenship as a philosophy that was the accumulation of
thorough planning and the evaluation of everyone’s skillset, this has changed.
I also used to think that leaders arose from the masses to a higher position.
However this viewpoint has shifted to one of a more coequal relationship where
everyone is a citizen of a functioning community. The leaders emerge from the
followers but still stay at an equal level as the followers. There exists an
equilibrium between a leader dominated vision and the follower dominated vision
and the two visions work together to complete a common goal and move society
forward.
A good leader, or even a small group of
co-leaders, is required to step up from the masses in order to make any
community a thriving success. This leader or group of leaders must be
knowledgeable of the task they are to facilitate as well as be flexible and
responsive to the will of the people. A leader is not always someone who makes
the decisions themselves as these leaders often become unpopular. They need to
have in their head the best interest of the community as a whole and be willing
to adapt their plans as the people change their minds.
The first example that comes to mind
when I think “leadership” was my role as a board member on my cities “Governing
Board.” This example of a small group of leaders is an elected body of persons,
most of who lived in the city their entire life. Many of them are involved in
local real estate, the school system, or finance and thus fulfill that
requirement of a good leader. Furthermore, they also genuinely thought they
were doing the best thing for the community. What they lacked was the
flexibility to make changes based on the popular thought. Most of the board
members had served for at least 10 years; with the aid of three-year terms, no
term limits, and instant name recognition. As a result of their inflexibility,
the community suffered as nothing really got done in my one year term, let
alone the six years I lived in the city. This example demonstrates the
ignorance that some leaders have which has no benefit for the community. In a
bigger picture, a stalemate of leaders often contributes to a community’s
decline and a rise of a new establishment as history shows. This path of
stagnant leadership also explains the decline of the United States and the call
for new and thriving ideas. The pattern must be stopped.
My leadership philosophy started with
the idea that while a strong leader is a vital part to any functioning
community, the followers are just as important as they provide support for the
leadership along with a marketplace for ideas. Ideal followers need to be well
informed and well versed in the issues affecting a community. They need to have
both a strong plant in their opinions, as a quazi-leader, and be willing to
listen to new ideas. Questioning other ideas as well as authority provides a
self-check within the community to correct itself. The Roman Empire serves as a solid yet
simple example as Caesar’s followers fall into all of my requirements; they
provided support, they were informed, they were open to new ideas as they were
well versed in philosophy, and they were willing to question authority.
Ultimately, the murder of Caesar was the direct result of his authority being
questioned by a group of followers showing the active self-check.
Straying from popular history, in my
personal experience, following was initially an experience usually undermined
by college resume building, leaving it overlooked. In my role as a volunteer
and teen council president at a local middle school teen center, I was able to
see the role of followership positively effect many teen council members. While they were leaders in the sense that
they stepped up from the masses with a desire to make a change, they were still
not as versed on the issues of the teen center to truly function as an
independent leader. Under the lead of the officers and myself, I saw the
members gain much experience in the realm of event planning and customer
service. They each knew a direction they wanted to take the center and expressed
that in Socratic seminar style meetings. They invested their trust in the
officers who had the power to make their ideas happen and in that sense, the
followers take on an important role. While the leaders in this case never
strayed to far away from the will of the members, it is important to note that
in the case that the leadership went against the followers, the teen center
would likely lose appeal and the number of participants would drop.
While being a leader and a follower are
both values that contribute to a strong community, a general display of good
citizenship is the final puzzle piece that turns a good community into a
thriving community. Citizenship can mean a lot: residence, legal status, and
even an area of origin. In the context of leadership and community though,
citizenship should be thought of as actions and thoughts performed for the
greater good of the community. Through volunteering with political parties, I
showed good citizenship as I stuck with the vague idea that an action I performed
benefited the entire community. The work I put into the campaign for the
candidate I followed paid off at election time. As a result of the candidate
winning, it is in my opinion that the community is in a better place.
With those initial ideas in mind, I
began to develop the idea that a leader and follower coexist as active citizens
to benefit a progressing community, and that values and beliefs further
contribute to their development. Values and beliefs instill a core base of
reason for leaders and followers. (Wren, 1995) The core base is
answer to why the leaders choose a specific cause. The core base is the answer
to why the followers choose to follow a leader. Core values and core beliefs
are not just thoughts and feeling but they are the basic ingredients for a
revolution. This core is the foundation. It leads to development of leaders allowing
my theory of leadership, followership, and citizenship to prosper. My values
include education, potential, service, and faith. Education
is the teaching of material to someone in order to enhance a persons knowledge
bank. The origin I have in education most likely stems back to fourth grade. It
was when my teacher identified me as an “advanced student” in math. My first
day in the new math class was very difficult. The teacher sat me down at a desk
and told me to “figure out” how to do cross multiplication. This is something
that the class had already learned and something that I had to “catch up” in. I
tried three different methods of “cross multiplying” to find three distinctly
incorrect answers. The teacher then sat down with me and explained the entire
process to me. From that moment on, not only did I learn that I was not a math
person, but I also learned that education was something that I deeply valued. I
value teachers who give their knowledge, almost as a gift, to you. They give
you this raw information that allows for endless application. Knowledge
obtained through education is indispensible.
I also value potential. To me potential
is defined as the untapped power and skill of a person that is yet to be
uncovered. It is uncovered through application. Potential for me rose as a
value when I was six years old singing at church. I had always loved to sing. I
had always sung along to songs on the radio. I had always been in choirs. It
was singing my first solo though that began the tapping of my music potential.
I learned that singing was my strength which had been previously untouched. I
began to apply myself in the world of singing and made nothing into something.
I unveiled my talent through taking a risk and making an application. This led
me to future work in choirs and eventually my love of music theory and history.
Next, I value service. While many of my
values were discovered early in life, service was discovered later. Service is
defined by meaningful work for a community in order to make your environment a
better place. Service for me began when I was thirteen and was required to do
service for eighth grade civics. We were required to do eight hours of service
each quarter. I did forty. The moment I started volunteering, I loved it. I loved
seeing how my community functioned. I loved the feeling of walking away knowing
that I did something. I loved the “thank-you” that I received a payment. It
felt good to know that some easy task I was doing made an impact. Transitioning
out of my middle school service role, I was asked to stay at a middle school
teen center as a high school liaison between the middle school students and the
staff. The value of service developed over the four years of high school. It
was almost as if service became a greedy value as I sometimes felt as if I
benefited more from my work than did the community. But in all honesty, it was
a mutual relationship where both parties prospered.
My most recent value development is
likely faith. It is the belief in a higher power to take away anxiety in
exchange for reassurance that everything will work out in the end. While I was
raised on and off with various sects of Christianity, I only accepted religion
as one of my values two years ago while working for a church. Going to church
every week gave me a time for reflection as well as a period where I had to do
nothing and worry about nothing. It taught me to not stress over things that
were out of my control. Sometimes its just necessary to give your worries away
and focus on the more important things in life.
I believe in the principal of purpose.
I believe that everyone on earth is here for a purpose. When I was ten years
old, I began going to help out at a respite care center for special needs kids.
My mom was the staff nurse on duty and I came along to volunteer in the
classrooms. “Access” as the center was called provided parents with a few hours
a week to get their errands done or just relax knowing that their child was
safe. While with their behavior, sometimes-severe disabilities, and social
problems, it was hard to believe that these children had a purpose: they did.
Many of these parents only had the one child. They had often tried for children
many times until they finally got what they had been hoping for. It may be pretty
simple, but these kids had the purpose of fulfilling their parents lives and
making them happy. When the parents came to pick up their children, both the
parent and child had a huge smile on their face. Hugs were always exchanged,
even if the parting was less than an hour. I believe that these kids are well
appreciated, despite the level of care they demand, by people in their lives.
It follows the principal that the more put in gives more. I believe that this
overlooked group helps illustrate that everyone has a purpose, even if it is as
simple as making someone else’s life better or has yet to be discovered. I like
to think that my purpose is to help people. I’ve come to that conclusion
through my community service and both the satisfaction that I receive as well
as the difference that I know I have made. I have combined my purpose with my
interest in the sciences to pursue the field of dentistry.
In the last few weeks of the semester
my philosophy further developed so that citizens morph into their role as a
leader or a follower. Once they morph into their role, it is a never ending
cycle of changing roles witching from leader to follower and rotating between
the types of leaders and followers. A citizen leader may become a traditional
leader or the passive follower may seek a more active role. (Wren, 1995) Leaders and
followers have an unbreakable relationship. In an ideal relationship leader is
to follower as the right wing of a plane is to the left wing of a plane. They
are both connected by a center chassis and appear to be the same, which I
believe is the ideal appearance of a leader. Like the wings of a plane work
together toward a common goal. If they succeed then both the leader and the
followed succeed at doing their task. If they fail their task then they both
fail. This is illustrated by the ability of a plane to land versus the plane
crashing. Of course in leadership and followership there are ups and downs as a
plane also experiences. There are also times where the leader must take control
of his or her followers and rise above in power. There are also times when the
followers rise above their leader in a coup or other sort of reorganization
strategy. This is illustrated in the planes ability to take a turn. Thei is
both a physical change in direction as well as movement toward the leaders or
followers ideals along with the downward and upward move of the wings to
illustrate the downward or upward power movement of the leaders and followers.
I like to think that my position on the
relations to where leaders and followers fall is based on both early life
expectations as well as those more recently. As much as children hate to see
the parent-child relationship, it is. I is likely the first leader-follower
relationship one is involved in. Therefore the relationship I hold with my
mother as a leader and me as the follower plays a dominant role in my views. My
mother has always treated me as an equal in our leader-follower relationship.
She has presented me with options throughout my life but allowed me to make
them independently thus having a sense of independence from the leader. Whenever
we had to make choices about moving forward it was always a “we” movement not a
“her” movement. She took care of her loyal follower and we worked together as
two wings of a plane to move forward. Often if there was an undesirable
consequence, we worked together to resolve the crash. Similarly in good times
both of us reaped the benefits and enjoyed equally.
In a similar way, when I volunteered at
the teen center, I served as both a leader of the teen council and as a
follower in my intern role. Acting as a leader I aimed to work among my teen
council members. This put me on equal terms with them. Specifically, when we
had one of our events, spaghetti night, I allowed each member to supervise an
area running as they deemed best. I tried to give them as much freedom as I
could. This proved successful as they harvested the responsibility and ran
their sections of the event flawlessly. This was a team success because of the
co-equal relationship between the leader and the followers would act as wings
flying toward a common destination. Similarly, when I worked on projects in my
intern role, my supervisor trusted me enough to let me apply my ideas freely to
a limited number of projects such as the “Roots and Shoots” club in the after
school program. I was still following my supervisor in the sense I had someone
to report to but we still worked together in a common destination of a thriving
teen center.
I feel that
while my ideas create a more comfortable and desirable relationship between
leaders and followers, they are far from the traditional models. My ideas are
fairly liberal, yet agreeable and thus promote both consent and dissent. As an
immediate example, Hersey and Blanchard lay out an easy way to depict these
ideas of a leader and follower equally working together to complete a common
goal. In a world where the concern for people and production are high, a team
aspect emerges. (Wren, 1995) Wings work together
as a team and complete their goal of flight as a leader and a follower work
together to accomplish their task. The concerns for both people and production
are high but are variable depending on the task at hand. (Wren, 1995) The model allows for
some movement of concerns, but with my philosophy, the upper right quadrant is
where my theory resides. It is idealist. Additionally, many historians agree
with my point of view. Gandhi, a servant leader in India lived alongside his
followers and moved to enact change as a unit. (Wren, 1995) His social change
had no dominating side but rather a peaceful cooperation between leader and follower.(Wren, 1995) He believed everyone
led and while my philosophy is less direct, it matches pretty close when
looking at the coexistence aspect.
With that
in mind, my unconventional view is also in conflict with several other
theorists. First, the same Hersey as above constructed a chart illustrating
either a follower or leader directed behavior based on the readiness of the
follower.(Wren, 1995) This conflicts with my thesis because I believe
that it can be the follower and leader directed and still be successful. He
also depicts the movements either as follower or leader directed: there is not
an option for both.(Wren, 1995) In my model this
idea is too unstable if held for a long period of time. The plane would
essentially crash. In the real world though, government would either be a
tyranny or anarchy, which has proved to be detrimental to society.
Additionally, Machiavelli’s views are polar to mine. He holds that there needs
to be a constant source of pure authority in the form of a king or similar
style leader.(Wren, 1995) While this provides
stability from the initial glance, is the society really stable? The emotions
of the people must be looked over. An unhappy follower is an unsuccessful
leader and unhealthy society. It is the metaphorical crash again but only after
drawn out suffering.
Throughout
the semester, I’ve seemed to view the leader as a normal person who acts to
create some change or give direction with the small meaningless power given to
him or her by the followers. I’ve depicted the leader to be one in the same
with the follower as far as status goes. The follower, though evolved, has
always seemed to have a great source of power and is the one who trusts the
leader. Citizens are everyone who acts in a way to create a better community.
That includes followers and leaders and is the most inclusive group. Followers
and leaders are part of the revolution no matter how small and make the change
actually happen. They work together as a collaborative unit.
After
looking at my previous reflections on leadership, followership and citizenship,
I feel rather confident with my final reflection. A leader is one who serves as
a figurehead or speaker for his or her followers. Their power resides in the
followers and while they are equal to their followers in every way, they stand
out and are known. Followers have all the power. They decide what they want to
support and depending on how involved they want to be and how much work they
want to put into it, they can assert varying levels of influence on the leader.
This follows Hersey’s model or leader and follower directed leadership
depending on the amount of work each group is willing to give.(Wren, 1995) Where we disagree is
I believe that the “normal” point is on the apex of the curve(Wren, 1995) where power is
shared equally and that there are only short periods where power shifts to one
side or another. This idea is very similar to my argument in snapshot number
three and has the same similarities with Gandhi and the same obvious
disagreement with Machiavelli. One shift toward Machiavelli that I must make
though, is that the leader is recognized as the head of the movement.(Wren, 1995) If not recognized by
society, than definitely by their followers. It is not a reward per say as in
the leader does not act to get recognized, but it is simply a matter of
requirement.
These
leaders and followers move toward active social success. I no longer wish to
call it change but rather success. This change in opinion is the result of my
belief that sometimes changes are not always what we need. Some old
institutions are successful not because of “staying ahead of the times” but
rather keeping true to their old values. They are around because they found
something that works and they kept doing it. When something breaks though, and
no longer works, fix it by making change. Success is success no matter whether
a change is installed or not.
My
philosophy is a system where there exists equilibrium where the leader and
follower both work together for success. This might take longer as there may be
differing opinions but compromise is key to make the most people satisfied.
When it is knocked out of equilibrium, it is follower or leader focused so
results occur at a more rapid pace and then would theoretically move back into
equilibrium after success is achieved. As a result, I think this model already
exists in some altered form almost everywhere. It exists in America as our president
and representative congress along with the election process. It also exists
here at Virginia Tech with SGA being the leaders and a portion of the student
body acting as followers. It is in an adulterated state though which I think is
the reason for its partial failures.
I can and will impact the way leadership is
thought of through small steps. Whenever I’m in a position to lead, I will
ensure I am at equal ranking with the follower and that I emerge into my
position from a pool of followers. When I am following I will assert myself and
demand an equal pull between leader and follower for movement towards a common
goal bolstering success.
Although my ideas have evolved over the
course of time on what it means to be a leader, follower, and citizen, many of
my ideas have remained content. Citizens are the large pool of community
members desiring success for their community. This is where success was adapted
from strict change as sometimes-thriving success is based off of old habits. A
citizen becomes a follower of a cause and erects a leader to act as the figurehead
for a society or movement. The leader works together with the followers and the
followers grant limited power to the leader. They work at an apex of equal
effort, but when equilibrium is broken it results in faster change and a return
to the coequal existence state. This idea is extremely flexible and can be
applied almost everywhere. Additionally it is already supported partially by
theorists such as Gandhi and Hersey. Having the equal pull of followers and
leaders in a society can already be seen in an altered version all around us.
It’s our decision to put it into place.
Wren, J.
T. (1995). The Leaders Companion (20
ed.). New York, NY: The Free Press.
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