What differentiates effective followers from less effective followers: An exploratory mixed-methods field study using survey- and video-data

Studies within the field of leadership research increasingly emphasised the importance of effective followers within the effective leadership equation. While there is an extensive amount of research on effective leadership, effective followership has been studied to a much lesser extent. This study tries to fill this gap in the research field and examines to which extent effective followers differ from less effective followers based on behaviours, self-perceptions, attributes and biographical characteristics. A mixed-methods design is applied consisting of 1) video-based data of regular staff meetings which are minutely coded to measure the followers’ behavioural repertoire (n=1503), 2) follower effectiveness ratings provided by each leader (n=112), and 3) open questions in a post-meeting survey on self-perceptions, attributes and biographical characteristics of each participant. Results pointed out that while there are significant behavioural differences between effective and less effective followers, overall these behaviours do not significantly explain follower effectiveness. However, we did found that the self-perceptions competence, self enhancement, workload sharing and job satisfaction significantly determine 33.5% of the variance of follower effectiveness. In the discussion section, the results of this research are reviewed, its limitations and practical implications are pointed out, and some suggestions for future research are given.