Recognizing and Illuminating the Leadership/Followership Balance in the VUCA Environment

Delmar Wilbert Tobin ()
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Delmar Wilbert Tobin: Fanshawe College in London

Chapter 36 in Handbook of Global Leadership and Followership, 2023, pp 943-967 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter takes a multilevel approach to the interrelated leadership/followership relationship within the changing global environment and argues that the narrative around achievement at the micro, meso, and macro levels needs to reflect more leadership/followership balance. The forces of globalization, particularly technological advances, have rapidly increased access to information across borders and cultures. Being informed in this global environment where we are predisposed to defining and accepting achievement and successes as leadership engendered has had dire consequences. In the United States, for instance, the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic saw the respect for the citizenry’s well-being give way to showing dominance and strength and demonstrating individualistic tendencies among other Western leadership traits, resulting in loss of lives and polarized politics, which has been mirrored in different societies with similar constructs. This chapter proposes that a VUCA world places new demands on how we understand effective leadership, especially as we have all experienced the scale and intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has surpassed anything experienced globally in this era and has created a new normal to which we are still to comprehend fully. Therefore, this chapter seeks to locate a global leadership/followership construct within the context of (the VUCA) environment, emphasizing the need for narratives that illuminates a leadership/followership balance. In doing so, it explores the traditional Western subjective notion of “the leader” and the “the follower” as embedded identities to (1) determine how these emotional states are negotiated in practice at the micro, meso, and macro levels; (2) discuss a leadership/followership balanced framework that addresses negotiated leadership–followership arrangements; and (3) develop narratives that increase the other voices, thus ensuring broader participation and recognition.

Keywords: VUCA; Holistic; Global leadership; Followership; Inclusivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-21544-5_54

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