Story - Jordan doesn't follow the rules

Earlier in this activity, you have explored ideas around authority, and how this relates to both leadership and followership. In this story, we will revisit Jordan, and think about how she takes up her followership and leadership.

Both leaders and followers have an extremely important part to play in the workplace – there are no leaders without followers, and no followers without leaders. We hope this story will help inspire you to think about how you lead and how you follow, at work.

On the whole, Jordan enjoys her job in the warehouse at Grub2You. However, she is not too keen on her manager, Forrest. She thinks Forrest has created too many rules for the way the warehouse is organised.

For example, Forrest has pasted a diagram next to each of the dairy fridges, showing the way the fridge needs to be stacked and ordered by product and freshness.

Sometimes, Jordan notices that other warehouse employees have put certain products on the wrong shelf of the fridge. She doesn’t see any harm in this, and occasionally does the same.

Over time, the warehouse fridges start to become disorganised. Some perishable items become hidden at the back of the fridges and start to go off, creating a horrible smell. When the staff are looking for certain ingredients from the fridges to give to the chefs, they can’t always find what they are looking for. This causes delays in the kitchen, and the chefs start to become frustrated with the warehouse staff.

Jordan begins to ask herself “Was Forrest right all along? Should we have listened when they asked us to organise the fridges according to the diagrams?”

She decides to follow the diagrams, and sometimes reorganises the fridges, and after a while notices the others are beginning to do the same.

Discussion

In the comments below, write your thoughts about how Jordan has taken up her followership/leadership in this situation. Thinking back to the previous article on authority.

• How does Jordan de-authorise and authorise her manager Forrest to do their job?
• What are the results of Jordan’s style of followership? Why might she be acting in this way?
• How does Jordan show leadership?