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With a world populated with leaders, Who are the followers and who wants to be a follower? Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal recently published the article, \u201cThe Joy of Following\u201d <\/a>which sheds light on the idea of what it means and takes to be a good follower. The author addresses an age old issue in the workplace where everyone aspires to be a leader, but many must face the harsh reality that not everyone can be one. There must be followers. While it may be hard to accept the role, followers are just as important as the leaders, if not more. Now the follower role does not aimlessly imply supporting a boss\u2019s every idea or only speaking when spoken to. Skillful followers are independent self-starters, problem solvers and help the boss meet goals and even deliver criticism which may be seemingly, the hardest task to accomplish. While it may appear to be talking down to an upper level, teams will only accomplish its set goals when all its parts are communicating. Several years ago, after a pilot was preoccupied with trying to fix a landing-gear problem, he ignored his crew member\u2019s observations that the plane was low on fuel and kept circling the airport until they crashed.This only one of the many examples.These skills are now so important that they are a formal requirement for employees in high-risk occupations. Despite its importance, followers get very little credit. As residences are to surgeons, Scottie Pippen is to Michael Jordan. The leaders are seen as the hero while the rest must take a backseat.<\/p>\n From an organizational behaviour standpoint, this article addresses the lack of concern for those other than leaders in the evolving workplace. Where communication is key, companies must delegate with efficiency through the work of pairing individuals without clashing personalities.\u00a0<\/span>Although this article was not the entirely interesting, the key highlights of Shallenberger’s work connected with me. I myself, have a dominant personality and this undoubtedly gets in the way of teamwork at times. An example of this would be the survival group project done in class where my team and I were tasked to rank fifteen survival items. Being the natural leader I thought of myself, I voiced my opinion strongly on each item and this lead to my team working my way. This ended up a complete disaster when we had compared our results to a survival expert. Knowing this, I will certainly know when to take the backseat and listen to my team members as every boss should to the their subordinates.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Word Count: 428<\/span><\/p>\n Shellenbarger, S. (2015, September 29). The Joy of Following; Many offices are finding they have plenty of leaders but not enough followers. And it isn\u2019t easy to follow well. Retrieved February 05, 2017, from <\/span>http:\/\/search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca\/docview\/1717309345?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=14656<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With a world populated with leaders, Who are the followers and who wants to be a follower? Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal recently published the article, \u201cThe Joy of Following\u201d which sheds light on the idea of what it means and takes to be a good follower. The author addresses an age …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2064571,815141],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blogproject","tag-comm292"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gordonl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}