Where you lead I will follow….maybe. :-)
Well the dust has settled on the events of last week and the removal of the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is seeming more like a distant memory every day. It’s amazing how quickly we adapt isn’t it…it appears to be very much business as usual again in the political world. So now might be as good a time as any to reflect on the part the new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, played in the whole episode.
You only needed to have read the papers and visited the comment section of on-line articles over the last week to see that there is a wide range of thoughts on the level of her involvement and the rights & wrongs of what she may, or may not, have done. While a lot of this has been focused on her ascension to ‘leader’ I think this is an interesting event to look at from the perspective of followership.
I think the first element of followership that is important to this issue is the view of Sevier, and I am paraphrasing here, that followers do not revolve around the leader’s purpose. Instead both leaders and followers revolves around the organisation’s purpose. I think this speaks directly to the school of thought that Julia Gillard owed loyalty to Kevin Rudd. The concept of followership certainly suggests that a deputy leader does owe their leader loyalty…but only as far as the leader’s purpose lines up with that of the organisation’s. As a member of parliament Julie Gillard has a loyalty to the people of Australia, her constituency and the party of which she is a member. Her personal and professional loyalty to Kevin Rudd is impacted by these other loyalties. He didn’t endorse her as a candidate, elect her to parliament or choose her as his deputy…these were both done by other groups.
If we accept that loyalty as a follower is to the organisation, and not the leader, the effective followership types identified by Chaleff (Courageous Followers), Kelley (Exemplary Follower) and Kellerman (Participant Follower) come into play. All of these follower types have as a characteristic, among others, the ability and desire to challenge the leader if they are thought to not be acting in the best interests of the organisation and it’s members. This is what makes these types effective followers….the idea that they are prepared to put their own feelings and interests second to those of the organisation.
Regardless of Julia Gillard’s personal relationship with Kevin Rudd or her own feelings about challenging for the leadership, if she felt the same way as the people who approached her to challenge, she really had no choice but to accept. If she really felt, as she stated, that the party had lost it’s way and was heading for an election defeat under Kevin Rudd’s leadership, then, under the principles of effective followership, it was her obligation to the organisations / groups she represents to challenge his leadership.
Now this obviously doesn’t justify a jump straight to disposing the leader. An effective follower would try to deal with any perceived issues before they came to such a head. And there is some evidence that Julia Gillard did do this. There has been talk in the media about her and Kevin Rudd having had a frank and honest relationship.
It is also not as cut and dried as this….an effective follower may also have tried to lobby for Kevin Rudd if they felt that others in leadership roles within the organisation were wrong and taking the organisation down a dangerous path. Effective followers also have the courage to leave an organisation if they feel that their own beliefs and their personal loyalty to the leader are not in line with those of the organisation’s.
In this case, if Julia Gillard felt that the direction Kevin Rudd was taking the Government in was right, the way he was doing it was appropriate and between them they had done all they could to convince others of this, then, as an effective follower, she would have given up her leadership position as well when he was deposed.
Now remember, this is all based on the evidence available in the mainstream media and, as such, I have really just presented it as a way to examine the concepts of followership. This may not, in fact, have been what transpired, and how, but I think is certainly worthy of consideration.
July 4th, 2010 at 10:05 am
Followers do have power in their hands to influence how their leader leads. It is a privilege that they can exercise this type of power. I come from a country where you do not quite see this because the same ruling party has been on board since 1959.
July 6th, 2010 at 06:29 pm
Tess, very well put!! I think we don’t always appreciate that some things we take for granted are not available to other people around the world.