Executive leadership has always been viewed as influential in organizations and has been researched extensively whereas the literature base remains sparse regarding followers’ perspectives and influence.  The phenomenon is particularly understudied in schools.

This paper reverses the usual emphasis on executive roles by investigating how followers (teachers) in schools perceive and work with executive leaders (administrators).  Using unanticipated data from a study exploring the concept of ‘exemplary teacher,’ it explores followership from the perspective of secondary school teachers across the US who routinely lead by innovating and influencing learning for students, peers, and the profession and who work with or in spite of principals to implement change.

The paper describes what these teachers did and did not appreciate in school administrators and identifies nine ways in which they dealt with administrators. The data raised questions about the selection and monitoring of leaders and their influence on the retention of exemplary teachers.

Review of Literature

In the literature on leadership, analysts typically recognize only formal leadership (titular or executive leaders) of an organization or group.  All other members are considered followers (those who are subordinate in position or ‘led’ by others).  Executive leaders do play an important role in all organizations, including schools:

They determine to a certain degree which information is emphasized or even allowed into the organization, which knowledge is discussable or undiscussable, how knowledge is disseminated, whether members participate in sensemaking and decision making, whether leadership is shared, and how the development and well-being of members is nurtured. (Collinson & Cook, 2007, p. 139)

However, leaders cannot function alone.  The mirror side of the equation involves followers.  Functioning interdependently and sometimes moving from one role to another, they influence each other.

Although literature on leadership is vast, followership has only recently emerged as a subfield (e.g., Bass, 1990; Chaleff, 1995; Kellerman, 2008, Kelley, 1988).  Following Burns’ (1978) landmark book, scholars began focusing less on leadership as the person or role and more on acts of leading such as tasks, behaviors, or functions of leaders (Smylie, Conley, & Marks, 2002).  Growing acceptance of shared leadership in organizations indicated three shifts in thinking that further blurred the boundaries of leadership-followership: leadership can be distributed and interdependent; leadership is embedded in relationships among those sharing common interests; and leadership reflects a process of learning that deepens shared understandings or results in positive action (Fletcher & Käufer, 2003).  Indeed, Gardner (1990) argued that the ultimate test of leaders is their ability to earn followers or, as Burns (1978) put it, their capacity to transform both themselves and the led.

Rosenholtz’s (1989) classic study provided key insights into school administrators’ influence on teachers (will elaborate).  More recently, scholars have extended understandings of administrators’ influence, both positive influence (e.g., Day & Leithwood, 2007; Engels et al., 2008) and less frequently, negative influence (e.g., Blase & Blase, 2004; Collinson, 2010).  Much less is known about their influence from followers’ perspectives, even less about perspectives of teachers who are both followers and leaders simultaneously.

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