Leadership success depends on granting followers effective agency.
Evidence
Second, they show that leaders themselves can only succeed where they enable followers to become successful agents. It was because DMp allowed the prisoners to become masters of their own fate that his vision and his position was secure. It was because the organizers of the Commune failed to establish a communal society that both they and their vision were swept aside. Agency, according to this position, is not a limited resource to be distributed between followers and leaders. It is something which followers have because of their leaders and vice-versa. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 123
Categorization
- DEFINE: Reframes agency as mutual/relational rather than a scarce good apportioned between leader and follower.
- XREF: Echoes the reader’s question on whether positive-project cohesion requires structural enablement as much as outgroup contrast. — connects to: Achieving good goals requires acquiring and wielding power realistically; Post-war leadership scholarship pathologized strong leaders and stripped agency from followers. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 19; Leadership acts on followers through collective group norms, not just individual exchange — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 34 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Leaders secure their position by enabling followers to become successful agents.
#corroborates(0.95) - Coordination behind a leader generates trust because followers can withdraw support
#expands(0.82) - A spellbinding leader’s identity analogies succeed only when followers co-develop them
#exemplifies(0.80) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 113 - Leaders lack direct power; followership grants them agency.
#qualifies(0.78) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 103 - Treating power as relational redistributes agency toward the subordinated.
#expands(0.76)