The Hidden Cost of Leaders Not Engaging with Followers

Leadership development has traditionally focused on authority, decision-making, and influence from the top down. Followership, by contrast, is often treated as an assumed condition, something that naturally occurs once leadership is established. Research and practice suggest otherwise. Leadership and followership are interdependent processes, and when leaders fail to intentionally engage followers, organizational effectiveness, trust, and adaptability begin to erode (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014).

Followership Is Not Passive

A persistent misconception is that followership equates to passivity or obedience. In reality, effective followership involves active engagement, independent judgment, and responsible participation in achieving shared goals (Kelley, 1992). Followers are not merely recipients of direction; they interpret, prioritize, and operationalize leadership intent in real time. When leaders fail to acknowledge or engage this role, followers are left uncertain about expectations, authority boundaries, and whether initiative is encouraged or discouraged.

This ambiguity often results in reduced discretionary effort. Followers may comply with minimum requirements while withholding insight, creativity, or constructive dissent, behaviors that are essential for organizational learning and resilience (Edmondson, 2018).

The Engagement Gap

When leaders do not actively engage with followers, a consistent and predictable set of challenges tends to emerge, often gradually and subtly. One of the earliest effects is the erosion of trust. Followers who feel unheard, undervalued, or excluded from meaningful dialogue become increasingly reluctant to offer candid feedback, raise concerns, or share insights that could improve performance. Over time, this “silence is mistaken for agreement,” when in reality it reflects a breakdown in psychological safety and relational trust (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002).

As trust diminishes, accountability shifts from ownership to compliance. Rather than taking responsibility for outcomes, followers focus on minimizing personal risk and avoiding mistakes. Decision-making becomes conservative, initiative declines, and responsibility is deferred upward. This compliance-driven mindset protects individuals in the short term but undermines collective performance and adaptability, particularly in complex or dynamic environments.

A lack of engagement also produces misaligned effort. Followers may work diligently and expend significant energy, yet without clear understanding of leadership intent, priorities, or decision rationale, their efforts may fail to advance organizational goals. This misalignment is especially damaging because it often goes unnoticed until results fall short. Leaders may interpret the problem as underperformance, while followers experience frustration from working hard without meaningful impact.

Finally, disengagement is frequently misread as resistance. Behaviors such as hesitation, questioning, withdrawal, or reduced enthusiasm are often labeled as defiance or lack of commitment. In many cases, however, these behaviors reflect unresolved uncertainty, role ambiguity, or emotional disengagement caused by limited leader–follower interaction. When leaders respond with increased control rather than increased engagement, the divide deepens and resistance becomes self-fulfilling.

Rather than recognizing these patterns as consequences of insufficient engagement, leaders often attribute them to follower attitudes, motivation, or generational differences. This attribution error shifts responsibility away from the leadership process itself and reinforces distance (fractured trust gap) between leaders and followers. Over time, the absence of corrective dialogue entrenches dysfunction and further weakens the relational foundation necessary for effective leadership (Heifetz et al., 2009).

Leadership Without Followership Is Incomplete

Leadership is not something done to followers; it is a relational process that emerges through interaction and mutual influence (Uhl-Bien, 2006). Without intentional engagement, leadership becomes performative rather than functional. Followers, sensing a lack of connection or psychological safety, may shift into self-protective behaviors, prioritizing personal risk management over organizational success.

Engaging followership requires more than issuing direction. It involves dialogue, clarification of roles, acknowledgment of follower expertise, and a willingness to incorporate feedback into decision-making. Followers are constantly interpreting leadership behavior, whether leaders are aware of it or not (Bandura, 1986).

The Hidden Costs of Ignoring or Failing to Engage Followership

Organizations that neglect followership rarely fail in dramatic fashion. Instead, the costs appear gradually: declining morale, increased turnover, diminished innovation, and weakened cohesion. These outcomes are often mislabeled as cultural or generational problems, when they are more accurately understood as relational breakdowns within the leadership process (Kellerman, 2008).

When leaders fail to engage followers, the cost is not merely abstract or cultural, it manifests in tangible physical, emotional, and financial consequences that directly affect organizational performance and sustainability. These costs often accumulate gradually, making them easy to overlook until they become systemic and difficult to reverse.

Physical Cost

From a physical perspective, disengagement contributes to elevated stress responses among employees. When followers lack clarity, voice, or psychological safety, they experience prolonged uncertainty and hypervigilance, which activate chronic stress pathways. Research links low engagement and poor leadership relationships to increased fatigue, sleep disruption, cardiovascular strain, and higher rates of illness and absenteeism (Ganster & Rosen, 2013; Kivimäki et al., 2012). In high-risk or operational environments, such as emergency services, disengagement can also compromise attention and situational awareness, increasing the likelihood of errors, accidents, and safety incidents. Over time, the physical toll of unmanaged stress diminishes individual capacity and overall workforce resilience.

Emotional Cost

The emotional cost of disengagement is equally significant. Followers who feel ignored or undervalued often experience frustration, cynicism, anxiety, and emotional withdrawal. These emotional states reduce intrinsic motivation and weaken commitment to organizational goals. Emotional disengagement also erodes psychological safety, limiting learning, collaboration, and honest communication (Edmondson, 2018). When emotional strain becomes normalized (just accepted as “the way it is here”), teams may develop cultures of silence or resentment, where concerns are suppressed and relational trust deteriorates. This emotional depletion not only affects performance but also accelerates burnout and turnover intentions (Maslach & Leiter, 2016).

Financial Cost

The financial impact of failing to engage followers is substantial and well documented. Disengaged employees are more likely to underperform, make costly mistakes, miss opportunities for improvement, and leave the organization altogether. Gallup estimates that lost productivity due to employee disengagement costs organizations billions annually through reduced output, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover expenses (Harter et al., 2020). Replacement costs, including recruiting, onboarding, and training, often exceed one to two times an employee’s annual salary, particularly for skilled, professional, or specialized roles. Additionally, disengagement increases the likelihood of grievances, errors, and liability exposure, further compounding financial risk.

Taken together, these physical, emotional, and financial costs reveal that disengaging followers is not a neutral leadership choice, it is an expensive one. Leaders who fail to engage followers may believe they are saving time or maintaining control, but the downstream consequences undermine health, morale, and organizational viability. Engaging followership is not an optional leadership enhancement; it is a foundational requirement for sustainable performance. 

At CMF Leadership, followership is viewed as a core component of all organizational health. Leaders who intentionally engage followers do not merely secure compliance, they cultivate commitment, shared responsibility, and trust-based performance.

Reframing the Challenge for Engagement

The central question is not whether followership matters, because we know that it absolutely does, but whether leaders are prepared to engage it deliberately. Leadership effectiveness depends on understanding how followers experience, interpret, and respond to shared physiological and psychological behaviors, develop trust through coregulation and ultimately create synchrony. When leaders invest in followership, they strengthen alignment, improve decision quality, and build systems capable of adapting under pressure.

Leadership and followership are not opposing roles. They are interdependent behavioral processes that rise, or fall, together. Ignoring followership does not simplify leadership; it undermines it and ultimately costs the organization money, time and people!

References

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Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley.

Ganster, D. C., & Rosen, C. C. (2013). Work stress and employee health: A multidisciplinary review. Journal of Management, 39(5), 1085–1122. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206313475815

Harter, J., Schmidt, F. L., Agrawal, S., & Plowman, S. K. (2020). The relationship between engagement at work and organizational outcomes. Gallup.

Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership. Harvard Business Press.

Kelley, R. E. (1992). The power of followership. Doubleday.

Kellerman, B. (2008). Followership: How followers are creating change and changing leaders. Harvard Business School Press.

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Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311

Uhl-Bien, M. (2006). Relational leadership theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 654–676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.10.007

Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A review and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007