Followership's Perception of Leadership Achieving Goals in the Retail Industry

Followers’ contributions to leaders’ success have not received recognition in scholarly literature. Research on leaders is abundant compared to research on followers. Organizational leaders should understand the connection between followers and leaders. The current qualitative phenomenological study was designed to explore followers’ perception of leaders achieving goals in a retail organization. NVivo 9 software was used to code participants’ responses. Twenty participations from one organization located in New York City, New York, were selected. Respondents freely discussed their perceptions of professional development policies, leadership strategies and abilities, contributions of followers, and the relationship between leaders and followers. The study was necessary to identify common themes between followers and leaders. The conclusion is that followers are instrumental in all aspects of leaders’ success. A recommendation is that leaders should foster an environment that reflects followers’ and leaders’ work relationship