Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 70
Sgt. Kimberly Hackbarth, 4th Stryker BCT, 2nd Infantry Division PAO
and establishing career paths for a select few while
ignoring the vast majority of subordinates in the military service.10 In the Department of the Army Fiscal
Year 2015 Lieutenant Colonel Centralized Selection
List-Command and Key Billet, published 30 April
2014, only 13 percent of lieutenant colonels were
selected for battalion commands, which meant the
other 87 percent would remain in subordinate staff
positions. This promotion rate supports Latour and
Rast’s thesis that the majority of military leadership
educational classes are useful to only a small percentage of the force.
Moreover, the Army educational philosophy in
entry-level officer and enlisted courses implies that
by teaching soldiers to follow orders completely, they
also learn how to become effective leaders. However,
some challenges arise when some of those soldiers
and junior officers become senior enlisted and field
understood phenomena on earth.”11 Leadership and
followership are complex fields of study. They are
dependent on each other. There cannot be leaders
without followers, and followers need a leader. If
leaders fail because of unethical decisions, the subordinate staff officers should also be held responsible
because they have a duty to be effective followers.
One of the most recognized authors on the topic
of followership, Robert Earl Kelley, defines followership not as a subset of leadership but as an equal
component to leadership. In his book, The Power of
Followership, Kelley introduces a new followership
model to describe different followership styles in
relation to leadership models.12 According to Kelley,
“the primary traits that produced the most effective
followers in an organization were critical thinking
and active participation.”13 Kelley proposes that
an exemplary follower is an independent critical
thinker who has learned to be a
critical thinker through education
and development. The exemplary
follower is motivated, has intellect, is self-reliant, and is dedicated to achieving the mission of the
organization. Critical thinking
is learned behavior that must
be accompanied with adequate
reflection time. With this concept, the follower, or subordinate,
must, as Kelley says, truly “not
just follow orders without critical
analysis and must participate with
the superior for the good of the
institution.”14
A soldier with 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, Combined Task Force 4-2 (4th Stryker
Ira Chaleff, author of The
Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division), helps a fellow soldier onto the rooftop of
Courageous Follower, is another
an old, destroyed building to provide protective overwatch for another element of their
patrol, 29 January 2013, in Panjwa’i District, Afghanistan.
key followership researcher. He
uses the military to provide exgrade officers, and just following orders no longer is
amples in his book of virtue ethics—examples such
acceptable behavior. Further followership developas German guards in concentration camps during
ment must be implemented into the organizational
World War II, and Lt. Calley and his platoon during
culture to develop effective followers at those levels.
the My Lai incident in Vietnam—to explain different levels of the leader-follower relationship.
Followership Importance in Relation
Chaleff ’s followership model emphasizes that
to Ethics
selective rule breaking is a key attribute of a couraJames McGregor Burns in 1979 wrote that
geous follower: “It is not ethical to break rules for
“leadership is one of the most observed and least
simple convenience or personal gain, but neither
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September-October 2014 MILITARY REVIEW