Understanding the relationship between followers and leaders

Contemporary healthcare policies tend to imply that successful leadership can be attributed to a single leader. Such an understanding of leadership ignores the significant contribution followers make to successful leadership and their influence on leaders. In reality, followers rarely simply follow leaders. Following is a complex process that depends on the context and involves followers making judgements about prospective leaders while deciding whether or not to follow them. This interdependence is ignored all too often or misunderstood by those who see leadership as something that can resolve the problems of the NHS. Using data from a study of leadership in community nursing in which the authors were involved, they argue that senior staff who ignore followers and their contribution to leadership do so at the peril of their organisations.