Versatility: Integrating followership and leadership
Leaders that exhibit versatility will adjust their leadership or followership traits to fit the situation or need. Their capabilities may exist but waiting for the right context to exhibit them is important. For example, when dealing with a global pandemic that disrupts both clinical and academic missions of an AHC27-29, an academic department chair may be engaging with multiple departments across the AHC, dynamically toggling between leading (as the lead of their academic department) and following (as a member of a clinical group). Having this versatility to transition between roles allows an individual to align with others and fill the necessary function of serving the larger process or goal. Similar to the way that individuals might move through various milestones throughout their development and not lose their previously attained skills, we imagine versatility functioning in this way. Once the capabilities of followership and leadership are acquired, individuals would be free to enact these skills in the situations that suit it best (aligned with the theories of situational leadership21).