Role Of Followership In Marietta

In Marietta, tourism plays a large role. To help bring tourists in the Marietta-Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau promotes the town through various forms of advertisement. This semester I volunteered at this organization, assisting with anything they need to promote events in Marietta and increase tourism. My jobs was to help with tasks that would help produce the annual visitors guide. Volunteering here has taught me the importance of different styles of followership and has given me an experience as a follower in a facilitative style of leadership.
This organization promotes tourism in the area by listing hotels and bed and breakfasts for visitors to stay at. Another function of the visitor’s bureau is to promote attractions.

Volunteering here I would be given a task and I would need to support the leaders and do everything necessary to complete the task. What I was doing did not require a high level of challenge, but it was important that I still did what was needed of me and provided the leaders with high support, making me an implementer. Different tasks require different styles of followership. According to Kelly’s model of followership there is a partner which provides high level of support and challenge, in many occasions this may be an ideal follower (McManus and Perruci 49). However, my job was to correct data in the computer and collect data from community members which did not create a reason for high challenge. Therefore, for this service sight a partner or individualist, with low support and low challenge, would be ineffective. Additionally the resource in Kelly’s model would also be ineffective because while the resource provides low challenge they also do not offer much support, which was important for this task (McManus and Perruci

They were all working together to reach the common goal. I noticed nobody tried to put off work they did not want onto a coworker. Christian would not delegate to needed tasks to someone. Everyone just came together demonstrating a facilitative style of leadership. This created an inviting environment that I enjoyed volunteering at. It creating a group where none of the employees were miserable and they all genially seemed happy about being at work.
This type of leadership model in a place outside of a classroom was new to me. I have worked my family for years and my grandpa uses a directive style of leadership when running his store. Therefore, being in this environment was different than what I am used to. However, it made volunteering satisfying. It was also interesting to look back and see myself as a follower and be able to place myself in Kelly’s model. Even though with my tasks I was not an effective follower, I see the importance of what I was doing as an implementer.
My experience volunteering here has given me a better understanding of the importance of different