Search for a command to run...
Abstract Despite the increasing diversity of people along various demographic dimensions (such as gender, race, sexual orientation, age, and religion) occupying leadership roles across numerous organizations, one continues to see the negative effects of a prevailing demographic prototype of a white, male leader on the emergence, success, and tenure of those who don’t match the prototype. Current literature places the onus of overcoming hurdles on organizations and non-prototypical leaders themselves, neglecting the crucial role of followers in non-prototypical leaders’ success. Building on DeRue and Ashford’s (2010) theory of leadership identity claiming and granting, the authors of this chapter identify sources of resistance to followers’ display of granting behaviors to non-prototypical leaders. They theorize internal and external factors that will enable followers to resist the status quo of only supporting prototypical leaders. They propose that followers also face demographic prototypes and must engage in identity work to expand the complexity of their identities and find alignment with leaders beyond demographics. Organizations must also continue to increase follower diversity to reduce the social risk of supporting non-prototypical leaders. The authors specify the focus of identity complexity and composition of the follower population from the perspective of two categories of followers based on demographic alignment with non-prototypical leaders: those who are fully or partially aligned (by various demographic dimensions), and those who are highly misaligned. They illustrate their theoretical model with examples. This model contributes to the literature on non-prototypical leader success by taking a follower perspective and showing how followers have a crucial role to play in breaking down demographically based leader prototypes.