The results from the self-assessments showed that I am in the in-group on the dyadic scale, and I am an effective follower. Over the past four years, I have had the same three social work professors in the majority of my classes, so I have formed good working relationships with them, and I have a good rapport with them, as well. I go out of my way to show my professors respect and kindness, and I try to thank them for their work and be productive and on task in class. And I communicate with them outside of class on campus, in their office hours and over email to receive feedback. These results impact me as a social worker because it demonstrates my ability to work well with others in office spaces and my ability to get along well with managers/supervisors. I think that both leadership and followership skills are important, but between the two, I believe demonstrating followership skills is more important because these skills can be beneficial to have as a leader, too, and they can help you meet your employees where they are by understanding what their roles are as followers.
I believe that a leader can maintain a personal friendship with team members without creating in-groups/out-groups because I have seen through my mother’s experience as director of her company that she is able to oversee employees who she has close relationships with while also knowing when and how to manage them as their boss, as well. My mom is close to a few of her coworkers, and one of her coworkers happens to be her daughter, too. She has been able to draw that line of knowing when to talk about work and when it is appropriate to be the role of friend or mother.
I also believe that someone can have a successful career by aspiring to be an effective follower because leaders and followers go hand-in-hand. A leader is not a leader without followers, and I believe followers are as important as leaders. I also believe that the definition for “success” is different to everyone, so being an effective follower may very well be successful to many people, but to someone else, it may not be.