Discover how leadership and followership are linked. Explore research on their reciprocal relationship and interdependent nature in teams.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Fri 7th November 2025
Are leadership and followership linked in organizational dynamics, or do they represent separate, independent phenomena? Research demonstrates they are inextricably connected: team members rated higher on effective leadership are also viewed as effective followers, with team-level leadership tightly linked to team-level followership. Studies reveal that uniquely rating a teammate higher on effective leadership associates with being rated higher by that same person on effective followership, demonstrating the reciprocal nature of these dynamics. Leadership and followership prove not just linked but interdependent—two integrated facets of the same relational process rather than distinct, separable concepts.
This evidence-based analysis examines what organizational research demonstrates about the leadership-followership connection, how these roles interact and reinforce each other, and why understanding this relationship proves essential for organizational effectiveness.
Research reveals that leadership and followership operate through bidirectional influence rather than unidirectional authority.
Studies demonstrate that leaders and followers have an interactive relationship with each other's behaviour, with emphasis on the followership generated by the interaction between leader and follower behaviours. This isn't passive compliance meeting directive authority but dynamic co-creation where both parties shape the relationship's nature and outcomes.
When leaders demonstrate respect, transparency, and developmental investment, followers respond with increased engagement, initiative, and performance. Conversely, when followers exhibit proactivity, candour, and accountability, leaders grant greater autonomy and involve them more substantially in decision-making. This reciprocal escalation creates virtuous cycles elevating both leadership quality and followership effectiveness.
Research on shared leadership—where multiple team members exercise leadership influence—reveals particularly strong connections between leadership and followership. Team members with reputations as effective leaders also tend to be viewed as effective followers. This challenges traditional assumptions treating leadership and followership as mutually exclusive roles occupied by different people.
In high-performing teams, individuals fluidly shift between leading and following based on expertise, situation, and task requirements. The software developer leads technical architecture decisions whilst following the project manager's coordination; the project manager leads timeline management whilst following the developer's technical guidance. This role flexibility requires both strong leadership and followership capabilities from all team members.
Followership theory encompasses two frameworks for understanding the leadership-followership connection. The role-based approach ("reversing the lens") examines followership from formal hierarchical positions—how subordinates influence organizational outcomes through their following behaviours. The constructionist approach ("the leadership process") investigates followership as inherent to leadership itself—you cannot lead without followers, making followership constitutive of leadership rather than merely responsive to it.
Both perspectives demonstrate linkage, though through different mechanisms. Role-based research shows how follower characteristics, behaviours, and attitudes shape leadership effectiveness. Process-based research reveals that leadership exists only through the following relationship—eliminating followership eliminates leadership by definition.
Leadership quality depends substantially on followership quality, not merely leader capabilities.
Leaders possess only the influence followers grant them. Formal authority creates compliance potential but not genuine influence. When followers respect leader judgment, believe in their vision, and trust their intentions, they extend discretionary effort, innovative thinking, and loyalty beyond contractual minimums. Without this voluntary following, leaders manage through carrots and sticks rather than inspiring through purpose and values.
Research demonstrates that the same leader exhibits dramatically different effectiveness across different follower groups. A leader perceived as visionary and inspiring by one team may be viewed as unrealistic and out-of-touch by another, with the difference stemming largely from follower characteristics—their openness to vision, willingness to embrace change, capacity to work autonomously, and alignment with leader values.
Leaders develop primarily through follower responses providing feedback about leadership effectiveness. When initiatives generate enthusiasm and results, leaders infer their approach works. When strategies meet resistance or fail, leaders (should) adjust their methods.
This feedback mechanism makes followership essential to leadership learning. Leaders surrounded by passive, uncritical followers who comply without genuine engagement receive impoverished information about their actual effectiveness. Those working with engaged, candid followers who provide honest reactions—both positive and critical—develop far more rapidly because they receive high-quality developmental feedback.
Effective followership frees leaders to focus on strategic priorities rather than operational details. When followers demonstrate proactive problem-solving, take ownership for outcomes, and manage situations independently, leaders can concentrate on activities only they can perform—setting vision, managing stakeholders, developing strategy, cultivating culture.
Conversely, dependent followers requiring constant direction, approval, and intervention force leaders into operational firefighting. The leader's attention shifts from strategic to tactical, diminishing overall organizational effectiveness regardless of their strategic capability.
Just as followership determines leadership effectiveness, leadership profoundly shapes followership quality.
Research confirms what practitioners observe: leadership style significantly influences followership characteristics. Authoritarian leadership tends to produce passive, compliance-oriented followership where initiative risks punishment. Participative leadership cultivates engaged, proactive followers who contribute beyond minimum requirements. Laissez-faire leadership (abdication) generates confused, directionless followership lacking coordination.
This isn't deterministic—follower personality, values, and experience moderate leadership's influence. However, sustained exposure to particular leadership approaches shapes follower behaviour patterns. Over time, organizations develop followership cultures reflecting predominant leadership styles across the hierarchy.
Leaders establish implicit and explicit norms about acceptable followership. Some leaders signal they want compliant executors implementing directives without question. Others communicate expectation for thoughtful challengers who question assumptions and surface problems. Still others expect entrepreneurial partners who take initiative within strategic boundaries.
Through what they reward, punish, and ignore, leaders train followers about desired behaviour. The leader who reacts defensively to challenging questions teaches followers to stay silent. The leader who genuinely values dissent and rewards constructive pushback cultivates courageous followership willing to speak truth to power.
Leaders investing in follower development—through coaching, stretch assignments, training, and mentoring—build followership capacity enabling more sophisticated leadership. As followers develop strategic thinking, they can engage more meaningfully in vision discussions. As they develop conflict resolution skills, they can manage team dynamics without leader intervention. As they develop decision-making capability, they can exercise appropriate autonomy.
This developmental investment creates upward spiral: better-developed followers enable more effective leadership, which provides further development opportunity, which builds even stronger followership.
Viewing leadership and followership as separate proves conceptually flawed—they constitute a single relational dynamic.
By definition, leadership requires followers. Someone proclaiming vision whilst alone in a room isn't leading—they're soliloquizing. Leadership emerges only when others choose to follow. Similarly, followership requires someone or something to follow—values, vision, person, purpose.
This definitional interdependence means improving leadership requires improving followership simultaneously. Organizations cannot develop better leaders without developing better followers. Leadership development programmes failing to address followership dynamics achieve partial results at best.
Japanese business schools teach leadership and followership as integrated facets rather than separate subjects. This reflects cultural recognition that effective organizations require both excellent leadership and excellent followership, with each enabling the other. Western business education traditionally emphasizes leadership development whilst largely ignoring followership, creating leaders unprepared for the reality that their effectiveness depends on follower quality they may not know how to cultivate.
In modern organizations with flatter hierarchies and matrixed structures, individuals routinely shift between leading and following multiple times daily. The department head leads her team whilst following the division president. She follows the CFO on budget matters whilst the CFO follows her on operational issues. This role fluidity requires integrated leadership-followership capability—understanding both from lived experience rather than theoretical study.
Understanding the leadership-followership connection generates practical guidance for organizational development.
Leadership development should incorporate followership development explicitly. Programmes teaching strategic thinking should also address how to support others' strategic initiatives. Communication training should cover both articulating vision (leadership) and providing upward feedback (followership). Decision-making development should explore both making decisions and implementing others' decisions excellently.
Most organizations formally recognize leadership through titles, compensation, and promotion whilst leaving followership unacknowledged. This creates incentive imbalances where everyone aspires to lead and none want to follow.
Effective organizations celebrate excellent followership: the team member who executes others' visions brilliantly, the individual who provides candid upward feedback improving leader effectiveness, the follower who takes initiative within strategic boundaries. Recognition signals that followership constitutes valued contribution rather than subordinate status.
Followers exercise initiative, voice concerns, and challenge assumptions only when psychologically safe from retaliation. Leaders must explicitly invite candour, respond non-defensively to challenges, and visibly reward truth-telling even when uncomfortable.
Rather than designating permanent leaders and followers, create structures enabling leadership rotation. Project teams where leadership shifts based on project phase, councils where members take turns chairing, and developmental programmes assigning temporary leadership roles all build integrated leadership-followership capability.
No, leadership and followership are not the same thing, but they are inextricably linked and mutually dependent. Leadership involves setting direction, influencing others toward objectives, and taking responsibility for outcomes. Followership involves supporting others' initiatives, contributing to collective goals, and implementing vision. However, research demonstrates they exist in reciprocal relationship—you cannot have effective leadership without effective followership, and follower quality substantially determines leader effectiveness. Moreover, in modern organizations, individuals routinely shift between leading and following depending on context, expertise, and situation. The same person leads technical decisions whilst following budget decisions. Understanding both roles and moving fluidly between them characterizes organizational effectiveness.
Research suggests sustained leadership excellence requires strong followership capability. Studies show that team members viewed as effective leaders also tend to be rated as effective followers, and those who cannot follow well typically struggle to lead effectively long-term. Good followership teaches essential leadership lessons: understanding subordinate perspectives, appreciating implementation challenges, recognizing good and poor leadership firsthand, and experiencing how leader behaviours affect follower motivation and performance. Additionally, modern matrixed organizations require leaders to follow others regularly—the department head follows the CFO on financial matters whilst the CFO follows the department head on operational issues. Leaders lacking followership skills struggle in these collaborative contexts where unilateral authority proves insufficient for navigating interdependent relationships.
Followership contributes to leadership success through multiple mechanisms. First, followers determine whether leaders' influence extends beyond formal authority through their choice to grant discretionary effort, innovative thinking, and genuine commitment versus mere compliance. Second, follower feedback provides essential developmental information—leaders surrounded by candid, engaged followers receive higher-quality feedback enabling faster development than those with passive followers. Third, follower initiative and competence free leaders to focus on strategic priorities rather than operational details—effective followers who solve problems independently enable leaders to concentrate on activities only they can perform. Fourth, follower characteristics moderate leadership effectiveness—the same leader achieves dramatically different results with different follower groups based on followers' openness, capability, and alignment with leader vision.
Followership proves organizationally important because collective performance depends on follower quality as much as leader quality. Research demonstrates that excellent leadership combined with poor followership produces mediocre outcomes—vision without execution, strategy without implementation, inspiration without follow-through. Conversely, excellent followership can partially compensate for leadership limitations through proactive problem-solving, peer leadership, and upward influence improving leader decisions. Additionally, most organizational members spend more time following than leading, making followership the predominant role requiring development. Organizations neglecting followership development whilst emphasizing leadership create capability imbalances. Finally, followership enables leadership—leaders require followers to lead, making followership cultivation essential for leadership pipeline development.
Followership theory examines the nature and impact of followers and following in the leadership process, investigating both formal hierarchical roles and the broader leadership process. The relationship between leadership and followership theory reveals two perspectives: role-based approaches "reverse the lens" to study followers as active contributors rather than passive recipients, examining how follower characteristics, behaviours, and attitudes shape organizational outcomes. Constructionist approaches view followership as constitutive of leadership itself—leadership exists only through the following relationship, making them inseparable. Current theory increasingly recognizes leadership and followership as interdependent dynamics rather than separate phenomena, with each shaping and enabling the other. Research demonstrates that leadership effectiveness depends substantially on followership quality, whilst leadership approaches profoundly influence follower behaviour and capability.
Organizations develop better followership through several approaches: explicitly recognize and reward excellent followership through formal acknowledgment, compensation, and advancement opportunities rather than celebrating only leadership; incorporate followership development into leadership programmes teaching how to support others' initiatives, provide constructive upward feedback, and exercise initiative within strategic boundaries; create psychologically safe environments where followers can voice concerns, challenge assumptions, and take calculated risks without fear of retaliation; define and communicate clear followership expectations rather than assuming everyone inherently understands effective following; provide follower development opportunities through coaching, stretch assignments, and training in decision implementation, strategic support, and constructive dissent; and rotate leadership opportunities enabling everyone to experience both roles, building integrated capability. Most fundamentally, shift cultural narratives celebrating followership as essential contribution rather than subordinate status.
Yes, not only can someone be both a leader and a follower, but research shows this dual capability characterizes the most effective organizational contributors. Studies demonstrate that team members rated highly on leadership also tend to be viewed as effective followers—the capabilities overlap substantially rather than representing opposing skillsets. Modern organizations with flatter hierarchies and matrixed structures require individuals to shift between leading and following multiple times daily based on expertise, situation, and task requirements. The project manager leads timeline coordination whilst following the technical architect's technology decisions. The CFO leads budget processes whilst following operational leaders on domain-specific matters. This role fluidity demands integrated leadership-followership capability developed through experiencing both roles authentically rather than merely studying them theoretically. Organizations should cultivate this dual capacity rather than tracking individuals into permanent leader or follower categories.