Leaders need to be led: complementary followership in the context of community-driven development program

ABSTRACT

Leadership has often been recognised as a major driver for successful team effectiveness. However, even weak leadership may lead to good team performance, and it is worth studying how weak leadership can be helped and complemented by followership. To investigate the paradoxical mechanism behind leadership – followership practices, we examined (1) multidimensional figures of leadership and followership using the multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ) and (2) the impacts of the combinations of leadership and followership on team performances both during and after a community-driven development (CDD) program. To that end, this study examines a rural CDD case implemented by the Korea International Cooperation Agency and the Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation. The analyses present some common patterns of how weak leadership and strong followership can lead to better performance than other combinations of leadership and followership. We conclude with theoretical and practical conditions of “complementary followership”, i.e., the complementary combinations of leadership and followership in group performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• followership
• community-driven development
• group performance

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the research funding from KDI School of Public Policy and Management. Lee and Kim gratefully acknowledge that this research was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A3A2924956 and NRF-2018S1A3A2075117, respectively). We are grateful to the excellent field survey administered by Myanmar Survey Research (MSR).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Research Foundation, Republic of Korea [NRF-2016S1A3A2924956].

Notes on contributors

Junesoo Lee

Junesoo Lee is an associate professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management.263 Namsejong-ro, Sejong, Republic of Korea. [email protected]

Jongwoo Chung

Jongwoo Chung an economist at Micro & Institutional Economics Team, Bank of Korea.3 Namdaemun-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea. [email protected]

Booyuel Kim

Booyuel Kim is an associate professor at Department of Environmental Planning, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University.1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea. [email protected]