An organization is composed of people that have a common goal. To achieve these goals, an organization will need a leader that will guide and supervise all the players of the organization. An ethical leader must have a good relationship on its followers and must know and understand what his people needs; a leader must be task-oriented and people-oriented at the same time to make a perfect team player for the organization. The leader is the most influencing player in the organization; the leader sets the mood in the organization and giving directions in the followers to perform an action. Followers as the adherents of the leader also need to understand and exert leadership.
Leaders are always the first and the followers will always be the second, but to be an effective leader a leader must be also a good follower to his own followers. Leader and follower relationship is vital to the organization because a leader and a follower are more similar than different. According to the book of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: a guide for college student by M. L. Shankman and S. Allen “leader must be conscious of three fundamental facets that contribute to the leadership dynamic: consciousness of context, self and other” (p.5). It says that the leader must have a connection to its follower to have an effective relationship and achieve common goal.
Effective leaders in any organization or sector of society ensure that their message resonates with the interests and desires of others (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, 2002). They describe that followership as the mirror image of leadership and that the leader-follower collaboration is a key to success.
Don Greyson and Ryan Speckhart state on their article “to optimize effectiveness, leaders would benefit from stepping down and demonstrating greater collaboration, while followers need to step up and assert greater leadership”. They illustrate that a leader must be a follower and vice versa. The collaboration between the leader and the follower will result into the understanding of each other and will surely result to an ethical organization.
Leaders do not differ from followers. Both support each other to achieve common goal. Leader who has a good relationship to his followers made a connection to them and will surely understand what his people needs. In all of that, leader is followed by the followers, any actions made by the leader affects the values and behavior of its own follower and so as the followers to their leader. Collaboration is the key to an ethical organization.
It's all about ETHICS 