Followership Types and Cultural Diversity
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Understanding cultural differences is definitely a step in the right direction in encouraging team collaboration and increasing team performance. I believe it's important not only to understand how these cultural differences can affect performance and team interactions, but the leaders managing these teams need to also rely on their people skills to ensure that each team member receives the leadership required to effectively perform with the team.
In my other studies, I found the concept of substitutes for leadership and the different types of followership types (Daft, 2014) interesting when applying them to the global virtual teams. This opens up a new complexity for global virtual teams, how do leaders who understand cultural diversity ensure all team members are effective while ensuring there is no dysfunction created due to assuming team members should act/perform in a particular way?
It's crucial team leaders in their understanding of cultural differences do not confuse this with stereotyping. “Stereotypes never accurately describe individual behavior; rather, they describe the behavioral norm for members of a particular group.” (Alder, 2010, p. 76, para. 3). Even though members of a particular culture typically act, perform, and communicate in a predictable manner, leaders need to realize while these may be cultural norms, not everyone from these cultures will act or perform based on the cultural sensitivity training.
Followership
While individuals can be typically stereotyped based on cultural diversity, leaders need to ensure they not only understand the culture but each individual team member as well. By doing so will help prevent any stereotyping from affecting team performance. Whether team members are from a particular culture or not doesn’t necessarily imply they will act stereotypically. This is where understanding followership types can greatly increase overall team effectiveness.
Under the ideal circumstance, it would be beneficial to have a team comprised of dedicated, highly capable, motivated and empowered individuals. According to the different follower types, this follower would be the effect or star follower. Effective followers are not inhibited in challenging the status quo, or to accept the risk. Courage is one of their best attributes (Daft, 2014, p. 200). This type of follower requires less effort on behalf of the leader to achieve results.
Members of a team may fall under any of the other follower types;
· Yes People/Conformists: These team members would do what they are told. Requires direction from leaders. Daft identifies conformists as concerned with avoiding conflict (Daft, 2014, p. 200).
· Sheep/Passive Followers: These members would require more leadership interaction and have all the task details explained. (Daft, 2014).
· Pragmatic Survivors: They usually go with the flow of what is going on. In the event an organization is going through a change they will become active until the problem is solved. This type of follower is not concerned with the long term, and typically would not make a good team member under normal circumstances, this team member may not be relied upon to take the team forward, (Daft, 2014).
· Alienated Follower: They are critical thinkers and do a good job with what they have to do. However, they don’t go above the minimum requirement. (Daft, 2014). This would also not make a good team member as the normally go about their day doing as little as they can.
Understanding the follower type of a global virtual team would greatly improve the way the leader interacts with members. Unfortunately, not all teams can comprise of highly effective followers, in these cases, leaders need to understand how to interact with these different team members and provide them with the leadership style they require to remain an active member of the team. These different followership types could pose a problem for active leadership considering the team is virtual, especially for some of these follower types which require more interaction by the leader. The active use of technology can help to provide some followers/team members with the style of leadership they require to perform, such as email and video conferencing.
Substitutes for leadership
“In some cases, virtual teams may lack appointed leaders altogether, being as a result formally self-managing and free to organize themselves”, (Crowston, Heckman & Misiolek, (2010). This is a substitution for leadership, (Daft, 2014), which allows for the replacing of active leadership, this could include Factors such as subordinates being “highly educated (and) professional”, (Daft, 2014, p.88, para. 2). A virtual team with capable, experienced, and self-motivated professionals have the skills to substitute for leadership. Such as the student project teams from this course. Even though there is no active leadership, this team was able to collaborate and work well with one another to completed required task.
Conclusion
With the wide range of individual performance levels and virtual team member requirements, I believe it’s just as important to understand who the team members are and what they are capable of, rather than only relying on cultural diversity which may lead to stereotyping and ultimately team dysfunction. By reviewing the different followership types it may be possible to assemble a team which would require less leadership.
References
Adler, N. (2010), International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, 5th edition. Cincinnati: Southwestern College Publishing. ISBN: 9780324360745
Crowston, K., Heckman. R. & Misiolek, N. (2010), Leadership in self-managing virtual teams, Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/897298/Leadership_in_self-managing_virtual_teams
Daft, R. L. (2014). The leadership experience (Sixth ed.). Australia: Cengage Learning
