Leaders should give their direct reports the opportunity to express themselves, experiment, innovate and feel that they will be supported should things go wrong.
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Just as there is no yin without yang, there is no leadership without followership. The two interdependent and complementary roles cannot exist without each other.
Followership is the symbiotic interchange between a leader and those they seek to influence. However, the word has long carried connotations of subservience, implying that followers are subordinates – a term derived from the Latin word for “lower order”. This notion is deeply misguided.
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