I. Introduction
No matter how leader carries out his duty, because it is not possible to determine which actions and relationships will be needed for achievement of objectives of an enterprise, which pushes forward. People cannot successfully complete their tasks, when they don’t interact with another people from which their career depends. Therefore it is important to understand which place is taken by the process of leadership, what part is acted by relationship between power and followership, how this relationship influences working efficiency and what methods and means of influence followers exist in different situations.
II. Leadership and followership
The leader is a person, who directs and coordinates the activity of followers, which must obligatorily obey him or her and fulfil his or her requirements within defined authority. The leader can carry out performers’ responsibilities only to understand the work specificity.
Today the main task of the leader is the fulfilment of managerial work, which corresponds to the special kind of creative activity. And when the difficulty of the subject to management and job level increase, the importance of the creative approach also increases. Therefore leader’s job provides a great opportunity to development of the personality, it is prestigious and brings the respect from surrounding people.
The leader’s responsibilities are difficult and multi-faceted, they require deep knowledge, erudition, analytical abilities, gifts of being politician, diplomat, publicist and speaker. Today no one person can match these versatile criteria and as a result the leadership consists of several people, which satisfy given requirements and carry out different kinds of work (Drucker, 1988). But each leader must have a talent for leadership.
The leadership is an ability to influence people to stimulate them for achievement of an objective in work and in the same time it is an ability to have influence on relationship, which is based on a collective action that affects change (Glazer, 1995) There are many means due to which leader can influence followers and lead the way.
The follower is a person, which has the same goal with leader, endeavours to satisfy the requirements of the leader and company and also believes in work on hand. (Challef, 1995)
III. Power
The power is a possibility to influence behaviour of other people (in given case followers). The necessity of power exists in management. In addition to formal authority leader needs power, because he is depended on people, which are within and out team objective.
Usually the leader has power over the follower, because the last depends on the leader in the matter of salary increase, job assignments, advancement, expansion of authorities etc. But in some cases the follower has power over the leader, because the last depends on the follower in the matter of follower’s ability to task perform, follower’s influence on his colleagues, follower’s informal relationship with people from other departments for assistance etc.
The leader has to recognize that his use of power to the fullest extent can provoke a reaction from the follower side, when the last will want to demonstrate his or her own power. And this effect can bring to level down of achievement of an objective and to the waste of efforts. Therefore the qualified leader tries to support the rational power balance, which is sufficient for achievement of objectives, but does not cause sensations of deprivation and insubordination for followers…
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