Abstract

The current leadership theories tend to focus generally on the characteristics of leaders and leadership without examining the followers. This article focused on followers, their Implicit Leadership theory (ILT), and the process of granting leadership to the Leader. The paper aimed to explain how leaders influence the ILT of followers and suggests a framework to provide new directions for the development of leadership theory by understanding followers’ perception of leadership. Organizations must develop ideal leadership style for leading the new workforce. The characteristics of transformational, transactional, servant-leader theories were reviewed and revealed that a single leadership theory is not adequate for leading effectively and that the ILT of followers must not be overlooked. Therefore, leadership theory studies must examine followership and consequently develop more flexible leadership theory models that can evolve with different generational groups and changes in the workforce and organization.

Key words: Implicit leadership theory (ILT), leadership, followers, granting leadership, romance of leadership (rol), leadership concepts, perception.