Perspectives from Followers

My followers and I do not see eye to eye. At the time they will disagree and claim I am making the wrong decision. It is often not till after the fact that they realize the value of my leadership. My followers would claim I am a neutral experience. This is because many of them applied for my job and were denied. Additionally I must enforce the standards of the corps. Many of my followers would label me as a “spaz” or “narp” meaning I care to much about the details. But when details are my job it only makes sense. In the corps of cadets appearances are everything. Senior Military colleges are most easily judged by their uniforms, so it not unreasonable to demand my followers meet the standard.

After progressing further into my leadership, my followers still do not agree with me. More and more, however, my followers understand my process more. While the follower I’m disciplining does not agree, other followers understand why I do what I do. While many of my followers still label me as a “spaz” or “narp”, they increasingly understand my opinion.  I have improved on teaching my followers to pay attention to the details. This has mitigated the push back I have gotten.

The questionnaires we took this semester can provide some insight into my exchanges with followers. In my empowering development questionnaire, none of my scores stood out. This is likely because of my even approach to follower exchanges. My scores in the leadership and membership questionnaire that stood out were my loyalty and contribution scores, which were both a 6, one standard deviation above the mean. This shows my exchanges with leaders and followers are very even compared to my peers.