Reciprocity – Thoughts on Leaders and Followers

A SCARS Institute Scam Victim Recovery Insight

The Obligations of Following

Leadership is commonly discussed as though responsibility flows in only one direction. The leader is expected to provide judgment, direction, organization, knowledge, protection, consistency, and accountability, while the follower is treated largely as the recipient of those things. That understanding is incomplete. Leadership and followership exist as a relationship, and relationships of this kind depend upon reciprocity. If leadership carries obligations, then choosing to follow must also carry obligations.

A person who voluntarily accepts another’s leadership is not simply receiving a service. The follower is entering into an arrangement in which another person assumes responsibility for providing direction, making decisions, maintaining structure, sharing knowledge, coordinating activity, or carrying burdens that the follower has chosen not to carry alone. The benefits of that relationship cannot reasonably be separated from the responsibilities required to sustain it. Someone who accepts guidance, expertise, organization, protection, teaching, or coordination cannot indefinitely expect those benefits while refusing the corresponding duties of participation, discipline, honesty, cooperation, and contribution.

This reciprocity gives following its moral substance. A follower owes the leader good-faith cooperation with the agreed direction, while retaining the responsibility to think, question, contribute, and refuse when conscience requires it. The important point is that followership represents a genuine commitment to participate in the relationship. A person cannot meaningfully claim to follow while habitually refusing to engage with the direction that has been accepted.

Voluntary followership therefore contains an implied promise. The follower has, by choosing to follow, recognized some value in the leader’s direction, knowledge, judgment, organization, or purpose. That choice creates an expectation that the follower will participate honestly in what has been undertaken. Cooperation does not mean merely remaining present. It means making the relationship function through actual involvement, fulfilling reasonable responsibilities, communicating honestly, and contributing to the shared effort.

A contradiction develops when a person continues to identify as a follower while repeatedly rejecting the direction of the leader. If every expectation is resisted, every obligation treated as optional, every request for participation ignored, and every form of discipline rejected, then the language of followership has ceased to describe the actual relationship. The person may still occupy a place within the group, but occupying a place is not the same thing as following.

At that point, something has to change. The follower can begin participating genuinely, can seek openly to change the direction, or can cease claiming the relationship of follower to leader. Remaining indefinitely within the relationship while refusing its responsibilities places the entire burden of maintaining it upon the leader.

This introduces another obligation that is frequently overlooked because leaders are commonly treated as though their willingness to lead were unlimited. It is not. Leadership consumes time, thought, patience, judgment, emotional energy, and personal effort. A leader must continue observing, deciding, organizing, explaining, encouraging, correcting, and carrying responsibility for outcomes. These efforts have meaning when followers respond by participating in the relationship. When they do not, the leader can eventually find that leadership has become an exercise in giving without receiving the minimum cooperation required for the relationship to continue.

A leader can eventually stop leading.

This possibility is not necessarily punishment, resentment, or abandonment. It can simply represent the collapse of reciprocity. Leadership cannot be sustained indefinitely by one person while those who supposedly follow refuse to perform the obligations of followership. A leader can offer direction, but cannot create another person’s willingness to follow it. A leader can establish structure, but cannot supply participation on behalf of everyone else. A leader can teach, guide, organize, and support, but cannot simultaneously perform the responsibilities assigned to the followers.

When that imbalance continues long enough, withdrawal becomes understandable. The leader may reduce involvement, redirect effort toward those who are willing to participate, or relinquish the leadership role altogether. The failure is not necessarily that the leader stopped leading. The relationship itself may have ceased functioning because the followers stopped following before the leader finally acknowledged what had happened.

Leadership and followership are therefore mutually dependent roles rather than independent identities. A leader requires followers who actually participate, just as followers require someone willing to provide leadership. Each side gives something that makes the other role possible.

The deeper principle is reciprocity. A follower who accepts the benefits of leadership also accepts responsibilities toward the relationship that produces those benefits. If those responsibilities are persistently refused, the follower cannot assume that leadership will continue indefinitely. Leaders, like followers, make choices about whether a relationship remains worth sustaining.

Leadership survives because people agree to lead and others genuinely agree to follow. When either side withdraws from that agreement in practice, the relationship eventually disappears, regardless of what anyone continues to call it.

Prof. (Emeritus) Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
September 2026