For the “Dyadic Relationship with Your Manager” self-assessment, my score was more towards the out-group. The out-group is followers with little or no social ties to their manager. A task-centered relationship. I believe this is true because with my managers I support their advice and knowledge, respecting what they ask of me and knowing there are boundaries as an employee-boss dynamic. Having this knowledge of being more towards the out-group will positively impact me as a social worker because I understand my role in a leader-follower relationship. For the Effective Follower self-assessment, my score was more towards the effective follower. This means I am a follower that is high on critical thinking and high on involvement. Both scores will positively impact me as a social worker.
I think it is important for a social worker to demonstrate both strong leadership and strong followership skills. It is more important for a social worker to demonstrate strong leadership skills. As social workers, there are many situations that one could be put in that the humanities perspective is the most important. Social workers should demonstrate strong leadership skills to be able to take initiative, have a strong following, and be confident in their skills.
In my opinion, a leader can maintain a personal friendship with some members of his or her group or team without creating the perception of in-groups or out-groups. I believe it is important to create friendships with the members of a group, so you know where a person works best, what their strengths are, and many other factors that come from a personal friendship. I think it is extremely important to check in with members, and to do so there needs to be some sort of personal friendship, with professional boundaries. This is what makes one a good leader. One that cares but is also task orientated. I believe someone can have a successful career by aspiring to be an effective follower. Not everyone wants to be a leader but being able to be an effective follower and working well with the leader, the other followers, getting tasks done is beneficial to all parties. If there were only strong leaders, and ineffective followers the organization would be unsuccessful. Every organization or team needs effective leaders.