Chief speech/essay The difference between leadership and followership

Started by Awesomeman8, March 09, 2015, 09:32:47 PM

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Awesomeman8

  I think it needs something, but what?

Leadership and Followership are important parts of our everyday lives, not just in CAP or at your workplace. But all the time, when driving or maybe even when cooking! You might ask why? How is leadership and followership used all the time?
  Imagine how chaotic our world would be without leadership and followership. For example, think of a road. What is the first thing that pops into our minds? I bet you thought of the vehicles driving on the roads, maybe even the road signs and traffic lights. Now imagine driving around on a road, a road without signs or traffic lights. What would happen? There would be complete chaos, you would not know when to turn or not know when someone else might be turning. You might even wreck! The road signs and traffic lights are absolutely crucial to the success of the road.  Now, think about the car on the road. What would happen if there were no cars on the road? The road signs and traffic lights would have absolutely no point to it, the only reason they were built was to provide an easy way to understand where to go and when.
  The car or vehicle, represents the follower. The traffic lights and signs represent leadership. You need both to function properly. The traffic lights and the car make a team.
  The biggest difference between the two is the role they each play. Leaders strive to guide and direct their followers. They always strive to be perfect. They motivate not only themselves, but their followers. Leaders also strive to stay open minded and flexible in any situation. Leaders also delegate, they give their followers a chance to learn how to be leaders.
  Followers are quite different; they strive to be loyal, trustworthy and respectful. Followers should not be afraid to voice their opinions to their leaders, when they do, they must do so respectively.  Leaders are also followers; every leader has a leader. You might be a follower of a leader. But that leader is also a follower of someone else.
  Leadership and followership are both very important skills for every cadet to learn, each cadet will do some of each. But their grade and duty assignment will determine to what extent they do each.

coudano

379 words is in-standard.  Just realize you could put in 121 more words and still be good.  Not that you have to fill all that space up, but it's there if you want/need it.

Too conversational.  The tone of your writing is about what you want when you give your speech.  The writing should be more formal.  Personally I would avoid second person.  Your speech should not be you reading your paper out loud.

Not an awful analogy with traffic and traffic lights.  But you mentioned cooking in the intro but never brought it up again.

More structure.  You have two "paragraphs" that have two sentences in them, and no main ideas, and one really long one that kind of runs on without a clear point.

The whole paper should have a big main idea (thesis) that each paragraph supports.
Every paragraph should have a main idea and 3 or 4 supporting sentences that back up that main idea.
Wrap it up with a conclusion that restates the thesis and reinforces a most important idea.

Read the assignment prompt and make sure your essay is answering the question in a very clear and easy to understand way.  After reading the essay I should be able to ask myself "what was the discussion prompt" and I should be able to figure it out, without already knowing it.   Hint:  show the paper to someone who doesn't know the essay prompts and see if they can tell you what the prompt was just from what you wrote.


Quote from: A long time ago, I
This being a comparison and contrast essay (describe the /difference/ between two things)
I would generally expect to see a structure like this:
Paragraph 1:  Introduction / Thesis
Paragraph 2:  Definition/Description/Examples of Followership
Paragraph 3:  Definition/Description/Examples of Leadership
Paragraph 4:  Contrast between the two (how they differ)
Paragraph 5:  Conclusion / Reinforcement

An alterntive:
Paragraph 1:  Introduction / Thesis
Paragraph 2:  Basic definitions of followership and leadership
Paragraph 3:  Similarities between followership and leadership
Paragraph 4:  Differences between followership and leadership
Paragraph 5:  Conclusion/Reinforcement


spyturtle007

This is actually my second copy. I will post the first. This one was made from tje other one. I think it might be a bit better. It followes more of your ideas...

Awesomeman8

Leadership and Followership

Leadership and Followership are important skills for CAP cadets to learn, we, as an organization, use leadership and followership all the time. That is why it is so important to understand the difference. Before I can explain the difference between the two you must first understand what leadership and followership is.

Followership can be defined as the willingness to cooperate in working towards the accomplishment of the mission, to demonstrate a high degree of teamwork, and to build cohesion among the organization. Good traits of a follower might include, being loyal, trustworthy, diplomatic and having the ability to work with another person as a team.  Followers are loyal to their leaders, they follow without question. But at the same time they are encouraged to stay open minded and respectfully point out something that their leader that he might have missed.
The USAF defines leadership as "The art and science of influencing and directing people to accomplish the assigned mission". Good traits of a leader might include emotional security, enthusiasm, and confidence. Responsibilities of a good leader would include staying accountable, having good listening skills, keeping the team motivated, and always striving for perfection. Leaders lead by example and are always fair in all of their decision making.

The difference between leadership and followership is the role they play in the team. The leaders are put in charge of leading the team to their "goal" or "destination". They simply guide the team and make sure it doesn't get off track. If the whole team looks up to one person, it works out better then to have the whole team just thrown at a project with no leader in mind. The team will end up arguing and chaos will erupt. Followers are given the responsibility of trusting their leader to lead them in the right direction. Their main responsibilities are working together as a team to accomplish the mission.

Here is how I like to think of leadership and followership. Leadership can be thought of as a road sign or a traffic light. And followership is like a car driving on the road. Now imagine the road without road signs or traffic lights. It would cause loads of chaos and confusion. Road signs and traffic lights are crucial to the success of the road. Now imagine no cars on the roads. The whole point of the road signs and traffic lights was to direct traffic. The road signs would be completely useless without someone to follow them. Leaders guide and direct whereas followers work as a team and willingly accept guidance.

Plane

In all ideality you should have a separate essay and speech.  Speeches require simplification, and a lowering of of reading pace.  You should also include signposts as well such as "secondly, finally," etc. to notify listeners of new POI's.  The brain is wired to pay attention to narrative, and I've always been told to "drop the statistics and tell a story."

That being said, you absolutely don't have to start from scratch again.  It usually doesn't take much effort to simply rework your essay into a speech that is entertaining, and not boring or monotonous.

Hope this helps somewhat (even though I didn't do anything with your essay itself)  ;)
C/2d Lt Matt Claar
Mitchell Award #65121

Майор Хаткевич

I've always recommended the cadets use their essay as the basis for the speech. Not reading it....but use it.

spyturtle007

Yes....this is going to be my essay....I am going to mod it to be a speech...

spyturtle007

Btw I am awesomeman8 and spyturtle007. ..one account is pc and the other on my phone

LSThiker

Quote from: spyturtle007 on March 11, 2015, 09:49:37 PM
Btw I am awesomeman8 and spyturtle007. ..one account is pc and the other on my phone

Having multiple accounts is frowned upon.  You can log in using your name on both a PC and a phone. 

SarDragon

Quote from: LSThiker on March 11, 2015, 10:03:34 PM
Quote from: spyturtle007 on March 11, 2015, 09:49:37 PM
Btw I am awesomeman8 and spyturtle007. ..one account is pc and the other on my phone

Having multiple accounts is frowned upon.  You can log in using your name on both a PC and a phone.

Tapatalk also works well on a phone.
Dave Bowles
Maj, CAP
AT1, USN Retired
50 Year Member
Mitchell Award (unnumbered)
C/WO, CAP, Ret

spyturtle007

I am using tapatalk...I had made an account on my pc and I already had one for tapatalk. Whatever...