Developing and Validating a Measure of Transformational Followership
Abstract
Leadership and followership are inherently interdependent, yet research has primarily focused on the unilateral influence of leaders. To advance a more balanced perspective and highlight how followers can positively contribute to the leadership process, I conceptualized and validated a measure of transformational followership. Transformational followership represents leaders’ perceptions of effective followership tendencies that enable productive, generative, and motivating engagements with and for their leader. After conducting a comprehensive literature review of both followership and leadership research, I created an initial item pool which was then subjected to rigorous testing across three distinct phases. Phase 1 leveraged feedback from organizational leaders (Think Aloud Protocol; N = 8) and academics (Expert Panel Review; N = 8) to assess the content validity of this new construct. Phase 2 focused on establishing the structural validity of the transformational followership scale using two separate samples of leaders (N = 295 and N = 327) recruited online through Prolific Academic. Finally, Phase 3 entailed a prospective design whereby leaders filled out the transformational followership scale with reference to one of their followers at three separate timepoints (N = 207). This third study assessed the temporal consistency of the new measure, aided in establishing an initial nomological network (i.e., follower proactivity, leader-member exchange, and leader attitudes), and tested several models positioning transformational followership as a mediator in the relation between follower behaviour and leader attitudes toward their own work. Cumulatively, these three phases of scale validation helped identify a three-factor model of transformational followership and provided strong evidence for the measurement quality of the new scale. Further, the results of Study 3 demonstrated that transformational followership acts as a link from follower proactivity to leader engagement and satisfaction. This work supports the advancement of followership research by demonstrating that followers can positively influence their leaders and provides a psychometrically valid scale that can be used in future research aiming to capture the nature and impact of that influence.