Analysis Of Hurwitz's 'Leadership Is Half The Story'

Followership development: practical implications

In Leadership is Half the Story (2015) Hurwitz and Hurwitz compare followership and leadership to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the dance sequences from the 1936 famous musical Swing Time.

At some moments of the scene, the couple only performs the same steps; another time Rogers moves backwards in high heels; other times, the couple act like partners, by collaborating with different, complementary movements. “Ginger was not Fred and Fred wasn’t Ginger. The essence of followership is having a distinct set of skills that are complementary to those of the leader” (20-21). Hence, leadership and followership are needed to create a strong and ever-lasting partnership, which is the key to promote organisational health. Dancing does not mean having a

Certainly, this skill could become pointless in those workplaces that require unquestioned loyalty. To a follower the ability to speak up and offer opinions – even when these are against their leaders - is challenging in the same ways of the leader´s capacity to accept a different point of view. However, if the follower has a loan to pay and a family to support, these claims are likely to become a luxury in many cases. Also, many people observe leader behaviours and try to emulate them without understanding that may be different from those of followership. This is particularly pertinent for junior staff, which can find difficult to understand and emulate positive followership behaviors. For this reasons, followers need to learn how to locate allies, how to make positive, rather than destructive proposals to solve problems, and how to retain a sense of proportion and