‘Whatever your job is, we are all about doing that thing super well’: High-reliability followership as a key component of operational success in elite air force teams

The military is widely regarded as an extension and tool of government and society, and unreliable military behaviour during operations can have far-reaching strategic and political consequences. Historically, literature has focused on the role of leaders in preventing disaster, emphasizing their traits, styles and attributes. Building on the Social Identity approach and High-Reliability Organization theorizing, this paper uses thematic analysis to develop an alternative understanding of leadership as a group process to which all members contribute—not least, the front-line personnel who do the followership that is ultimately the proof of leadership. Supported by evidence from semi-structured interviews with air force personnel (N = 25), analysis points to the importance of collective mind and social identity (a shared sense of ‘us’). It also suggests that social identity strength, content and alignment—and the identity leadership shaping this—provides a basis for the High-Reliability Followership that allows military groups to avoid potentially disastrous events. In this way, the creation of HROs hinges on the combined actions of identity leaders who work to represent, advance and create a specific sense of shared identity and engaged followers who internalize that identity content and enact it through behaviour that supports high reliability.