The University of Delaware launched the first co-curricular Followership Certificate to help students develop the skills to excel as proactive, effective followers. This session will detail the certificate’s development, successes, and challenges, highlighting missed objectives and opportunities for improvement. Through reflective exercises, discussions, and activities, students shifted their view of followership from passive to active. Lessons and insights will benefit educators, practitioners, and coaches interested in enhancing followership education.
Robert Kelley’s groundbreaking research demonstrated that followers produce 80% of the outcomes in organizations, underscoring their critical, yet often overlooked, role. This presentation expands Kelley’s work into a broader societal context, exploring how followers—not just leaders—serve as the primary drivers of positive societal change. It will examine the contributions of followers to social movements that have advanced justice, equality, democracy, and peacebuilding, emphasizing their collective power in shaping a better world. Drawing on recent research, as well as insights from Ira Chaleff’s How to Break a Tyrant, this session will highlight how courageous, engaged, and proactive followership is vital in addressing systemic challenges and building sustainable change.
What do you really think about followers? Who are more important to an organization: leaders or followers? Are you a leader or a follower? Key topics explored in this session include follower as role, reimagining leadership as a system, unspoken follower perspectives, and the key characteristics of effective followers. Learn how a focus on followership and follower development may be more important to high levels of organizational performance than leadership development. Recipients of the 2023 Followership Trailblazer award and co-authors of the landmark textbook, The Essentials of Followership, already in its 2nd edition, Mark and Mike have designed this deep dive session especially for those new to followership and for those seeking effective models of presenting it to others.
What do you really think about followers? Who are more important to an organization: leaders or followers? Are you a leader or a follower? Key topics explored in this session include follower as role, reimagining leadership as a system, unspoken follower perspectives, and the key characteristics of effective followers. Learn how a focus on followership and follower development may be more important to high levels of organizational performance than leadership development. Recipients of the 2023 Followership Trailblazer award and co-authors of the landmark textbook, The Essentials of Followership, already in its 2nd edition, Mark and Mike have designed this deep dive session especially for those new to followership and for those seeking effective models of presenting it to others.
