If you look at a profile's "original page", you can see its follows and followers. More info at https://fedi.tips/what-are-original-pages-in-mastodon/
I agree it's not the most convenient way of doing things, this issue has been discussed a lot on the Mastodon github, hopefully it gets resolved. (For anyone interested in the techy stuff, see the issue at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/20533)