Future Focus Required
Shamir (2007) suggested that leadership effectiveness is just as much a product of good followers as it is of good leaders. Shamir (2007) made some specific recommendations for future work on follower-centered research, including examining how followers’ needs, identities, and implicit theories affect leader selection and emergence as well as leader endorsement and acceptance; how follower interactions/social networks influence the emergence of leadership and effectiveness; how followers’ expectations, values, and attitudes determine leader behavior; how followers’ expectations affect the leader’s motivation and performance; how followers’ acceptance of the leader and their support for the leader affect the leader’s self-confidence, self-efficacy, and behavior; how followers’ characteristics (e.g., self-concept clarity) determine the nature of the leadership relationship formed with the leader; and how followers’ attitudes and characteristics (e.g., level of development) affect leader behavior.