More than Follow the Leader: Expectations, Behaviors, Stability, and Change in a Co-Created Leadership Process

This conceptual paper challenges assumptions about the primacy of leaders and leading over followers and following in the leadership process. Leadership cannot be holistically understood unless followership and leadership are researched as they are enacted—in tandem. To move toward a more complete understanding of leadership, we introduce a leadership system which involves a co-created leadership process, unfolds over time, and accounts for stability and change in partners’ expectations and behaviors. Drawing on role theory and implicit leadership (ILTs) and followership (IFTs) theories, we suggest how expectations of self and other influence leading and following behaviors and the leadership process. Personal learning acquired through the experience of leadership results in stability or change in one’s future expectations. Our framework explains how stability and change in each dyad partners’ leadership and followership expectations comes about through constructionist and constructivist mechanisms. These mechanisms occur across two timelines: The first is the microadjustments made to expectations and behaviors within a particular leadership occurrence. The second is the loop between personal learning and the expectations each member carries into future leadership occurrences and relationships. Practical implications arising from this new framework include considerations for leadership and followership development and a contribution to leadership forecasting.