Followership

You can’t be a leader without followers, so followers are critical for leadership to happen. The oddity is that relative to the research and thinking about leaders’ behaviours the research and thinking around follower behaviour is much scarcer. The Followership movement has been around for a long-time however. The initial significant works on it, Robert Kelley’s Power of Followership, was published in 1992, and Ira Chaleff’s The Courageous Follower in 1995. Since then there had been a gradual increase in interest in the topic – but it remains a subset of the leadership exploration.
 
Followership scholars and thinkers are at pains to underline that leadership and followership can not be completely disentangled, they are necessarily and intimately connected to each other. This issue shines a light on the topic – and we have contributions from some of today’s greatest Followership experts. Marc and Samantha Hurwitz have written our opening article – together they are the driving force behind the annual Global Followership Conference, held in April this year in Glasgow, Scotland, and authors of Leadership is Only Half the Story.
 
We are honoured to have an article by Ira Chaleff on leader-follower dynamics and the options followers have available to them. Christian Monö writes on Natural Followership, a topic he has been exploring for almost two decades, and has recently been recognised for with the 2024 Followership Award of Distinction. While Langley Sharp, the former director of the UK’s Centre for Army Leadership, and author of its recent Followership Doctrine Note, writes on followership and trust. Basil Read draws on his deep practical experience of introducing followership into various organizations, and Julie Newman walks us through her experience doing the same in a non-profit and the remarkable results it created.

Key Articles

Followership Matters

Marc and Samantha Hurwitz

Marc and Sam introduce the key Followership themes and why they are so critical for the performance of organizations.

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Natural Followership and Why it is Important

Christian Monö

Christian explores how humans share leader and follower roles all the time in informal settings, have done for millennia – and asks why corporate organisations need to rely on hierarchy.

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The Reciprocity of Trust in High-Performing Teams

Langley Sharp MBE

Langley shares his insights and experiences from the military and highlights how the follower role pivots on trust, both for and to the leader, in the same manner as the leader needs to of the follower.
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LEADERSHIP

Followership Matters: Everyone is a follower Marc and Samantha Hurwitz

Natural Followership and Why it is Important Christian Monö

Followership, Courage and Intelligent Disobedience Ira Chaleff

The Reciprocity of Trust in High Performance Teams Langley Sharp MBE

Levels of Empowerment How Followership is Changing the Leader-Follower Dynamic Basil Read

A Followership Journey A Human Resources Perspective on the Organization-Wide Implementation of a Leadership-Followership Program Julie Newman

To Pause and Reflect – The Leadership Imperative in Times of Change A Perspective from a Sabbatical in South America
Mark McCartney

Creating the Organization of the Future: Building on Drucker and Confucian Foundations Roddy Millar

Leadership Program ROI Useful Fact or Mythical Fiction? Wendy Shepherd

IDEAS FOR LEADERS

Idea #872: Why Followers Make Great Leaders

Idea #854: Followers Can Fix the Damage of Leadership Incompetence

Idea #846: Gender Diverse Teams are More Innovative and Impactful

Idea #866: Leaders’ Management of Team Emotions Key to Agile Success

BOOK REVIEWS

Infectious Generosity

The AI-Savvy Leader

The Neurodiversity Edge

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