20.1. LEADERSHIP, FOLLOWERSHIP, AND ORGANIZATIONAL VISION

It has been noted that without followers there are no leaders.^[] However, researchers and practitioners alike have routinely overlooked the importance of followers in the leadership equation. Leaders are defined as individuals who influence others to adopt certain ideologies and ways of acting upon the world. Followers, in contrast, are those individuals who ascribe to the ideals and directives of others. Defining followers in this way limits our thinking about the potential contribution that they make to an organization's processes and overall effectiveness. Indeed, many researchers have noted that the measure of an organization's success or effectiveness is too often sought by examining influential leaders,^[] frequently ignoring the fact that a leader's success is often dependent on the effectiveness of his or her followers. Thus any examination of leadership behaviors or processes should also include an examination of follower behaviors and processes in an effort to gain a more holistic understanding of this important partnership.

Recent literature on organizational vision has also ascribed to the traditional leader-follower distinction: placing leaders in the active role of creating and articulating the vision and followers in a more passive role of conforming to the visionary direction. Kirkpatrick and Locke defined vision as an idealized goal that the leader wants the organization to achieve in the future.^[] Likewise, other authors have defined vision as a mental image that a leader evokes to portray an idealized future for an organization.^[] These definitions suggest that vision creation and dissemination are largely the responsibility of leaders and say little about how followers can directly contribute to the visioning process. Empirical research on vision has reinforced the dominant focus on leaders by investigating the process of vision creation, articulation, and implementation from the leaders' perspective. Whereas these empirical investigations have created a wealth of knowledge regarding the outcomes of vision articulation, fewer studies have identified the role that followers play in the visioning process. For example, here are some of the important findings on leadership and vision: