Servant Leadership and Followership are roles inherently adopted by a combat leader. This essay will compare, contrast, and expound on both roles while analyzing how servant leadership and followership interact and ultimately compliment each other. In a military environment, a Soldier will nearly always be a leader as well as subordinate. As a combat leader, it is crucial to gain familiarity into how these roles function in unison in order to untangle complex problems that carry catastrophic consequences.
Servant Leadership Servant Leadership encompasses a leadership approach that involves placing the needs of the team above that of the leader. This approach encourages subordinate input in order to facilitate a sense of “buy-in” from their
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The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, defines followership as “being a follower of character and commitment acting to support the needs and goals of the team” (Followership, n.d.). Effective followers are independent and critical thinkers that take an active role in the team's approach to addressing challenges. Effective followers, while not placed in a directed leadership position within the team, take initiative to provide encouragement and facilitate community amongst their peers in order to support their leader and team as a whole. Lastly, it is important to note that while the study of followership has been largely neglected, the role of a follower is no less important than that of a leader. This role is to be a respected one as it is constantly adopted by a Soldier in his/her …show more content…
The leader also adopts the responsibility to steward the welfare of his subordinates, and if need be, to sacrifice personal safety for the welfare of his/her team. A leader is accountable for the team's actions whether that be in success or failure and is to credit the team for any success. The leader's role is a sacred one, but often comes with less recognition than that of the follower (Masson and Duran-Stanton, 2021).
In contrast to servant leadership, the follower must support the team by taking an active role in supporting the leader while trusting in the decisions of the appointed leader. A follower is also not directly charged with creating decisions for the team, but is to offer constructive input on decisions when the leader prompts input from the team. The follower most greatly varies from the role of a servant leader in that the follower carries less responsibilities in terms of being held accountable for accomplishment of the team's objectives. However, this is not to say that the follower is passive or inactive in team taskings and objectives (Masson and Duran-Stanton,