Versatility: Integrating followership and leadership
Even individuals who demonstrate complexity-based leadership will see that constantly maintaining this vantage point is unsustainable in all contexts. Leaders that exhibit versatility will adjust their leadership or followership capabilities to fit the situation or need. Understanding context is key; it requires the situational awareness that comes with leadership experience to assume other roles and adapt as necessary. Complexity requires versatility, where a leader may assume the role of a follower.
For example, a global pandemic that disrupts both clinical and academic missions of an AHC requires leaders to work together across purposes and portfolios to reimagine workflows, manage health human resource challenges, ensure adjustment of strategic priorities, collaborate to create new budgeting models or pitch new capital expenses to react to the patient surges, research disruptions, and ongoing education needs within a pandemic.27-29 Within a single day, the same department chair may be engaging with multiple departments across the AHC. All the while this individual must bear in mind various roles they play, dynamically toggling between leading and following in varying settings. 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. For many, it is this constant switching of leadership-followership perspectives that is psychologically exhausting.