How Followers Are Creating Change and Challenging Leaders - Assignment Example

This paper explains the reason why in the student's response, the meeting seemed only to be beneficial to the manager as they sought opinions and ideas from the followers who in most cases felt left out of the meeting. The fact that leaders need followers more than followers need the leaders is also manifested in the student's group as followers contributed a lot to the promotion of the diehard in as much she did whatever she could to remain impressive to management. Beyond doubt, leaders and followers should have a positive mutual relationship as Kellerman (2008) puts it. This is because leaders play a great role in providing support to the followers who in turn are required to support the leaders in their endeavor to achieve group success. In fact, in many cases, good followers are what help leaders achieve success. They challenge any flawed strategy or proposals of a leader, support and exert pressure on leaders to make changes in areas that seem to be wanting as was evident with the degree and enthusiasm of the nurse. Followers on the other hand also equally need the leaders especially to instill hope, encouragement, understanding, trust, and stability. This is what the team members where the student worked expected of their leaders and managers. With this lacking, they became outsiders listening to a conversation as what was being discussed at the meeting concerned them to the least extent. If only the team leaders realized and attended to the needs of the rest of the teammates, the team would achieve greater success.

Response to Student’s 2nd Answer- Bad Leader Concept

It is true from Barbara Kellerman’s (2004) observation that bad leaders exist in different types, among them being corrupt, incompetent, callous, evil, rigid, insular, and intemperate. It is also true that an incompetent leader is a bad leader who pretends to know while in the real sense he or she does not know as was the case was the case with the manager of the Pilate studio where he once worked. The manager had no experience in running the business since what she did was ensure that the door to the business premise remained open. Furthermore, instead of the business operating as a Spa, her studio ended up possessing characteristics of a gym. These incompetent leaders always fail to reason. While agreeing with Kellerman that rigidity may be bad, I tend to think this is not always the case all the time. This is because a leader should not just accept all that he or she is being proposed to but instead should be able to reason out and decide. However, in the case of Pilate Studios' manager, her being rigid portrayed bad leadership, as the proposal by the gym expert was good for her business. It is worth noting that the main aim of a business venture is to make a profit unless it is a non-profit organization. Any manager who goes against this is thus an intemperate leader as was the case with the manager of the Pilate studio who had no control over her business and kept giving out handouts yet the business is supposed to be a profit-making venture. Her being intemperate is proven by the fact that she was not willing to listen to her team member’s advice. The manager’s act of denying a team member permission to attend a funeral was indeed callous especially going by her unsympathetic remarks. This is because as a manager, one should be able to allow employees to attend to matters relating to personal life such as the of funerals close relatives. Beyond doubt corruption is a sign of bad leadership since it leads to the downfall of an organization. This is so because it leads to the mismanagement of resources and funds as the student witnessed in the studio where he worked. A good leader should show respect to everyone irrespective of whether the person is a member of the company or an outsider. This is because for the company to be successful it needs both the outsiders and insiders in one way or the other. There are certain things that employees do that may warrant a manager to react in a certain way as a warning to prevent a repeat of a mistake. It is however evil to overreact and accuse an team member of doing something before conducting a thorough investigation to establish the truth. In the student’s case, it is beyond doubt that the woman who owned the business was a bad leader going to Kellerman’s premises about bad leadership.