Follow the Leader: Changing the Game of Heirarchy in Healthcare

Almost every formal organization has a multilayered hierarchy. The role of the leader has been discussed in the literature for decades. Less well understood, and certainly less well documented, is the role of the follower. However, without followers, leaders could not exist. Followers make up the majority of any organization, but have been overlooked as a worthy component of the team. The first step in breaking this mold is identifying the types of followership that are present within the nursing profession. The purpose of this project was to identify the followership styles within a population of registered nurses, with four years or less of experience in the nursing profession. A validated questionnaire found within the business world was utilized to survey these nurses in different situations with questions related to followership. There were five different types of followers that could be identified using this questionnaire.

Subjects: Population of nurses with four or fewer years of experience in a designated hospital setting in Southwest Texas.

Method: A descriptive study, using a 20 question, seven point (zero-six) Likert-type, validated questionnaire was changed to an electronic format in Qualtrics and used to survey the identified nursing population. Data collected within Qualtrics XM were exported into Excel and then into SPSS 20 IBM, version which was then used to create a scatter plot. The two axes represented the level of independent thinking and the level of active engagement of the participants. Correlations between demographics and followership styles were also conducted, using a CHAID analysis.

Results: Using Robert E. Kelley's scatter plot to analyze the data, three different types of followers were identified within the respondents. The three types were exemplary followers, conformist followers, and pragmatist followers.

Conclusion: Of the qualified participants who completed the questionnaire, the majority fell into the exemplary follower category. The results identified that an issue with active engagement exists among all of the participants.