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.
This workshop invites participants to explore how leaders and followers collaborate to co-create leadership. Participants begin by identifying and discussing their implicit ideas about this relationship. Then they engage in an activity to explore how their approach to following has contribute to the leadership that emerged in a past leadership situation. They then examine how changing their approach to following could alter the relationship and the leadership displayed between the leader and follower.
The terms Leadership and Followership are often insufficiently defined, leading to conflation and miscommunication. This session aims to explore a clearer demarcation by presenting a pracademic approach that combines a framework from practical expertise with academic research to propose a distinction of Followership from other concepts and foster reflection on this distinction with participants. Attendees will gain a unique perspective on bridging the practitioner-academic divide, with practical strategies and academic rigor contributing to a more unified understanding. Join us to advance dialogue and inspire stronger collaboration between these communities.
By day, Eric is an equity partner at a financial services firm with more than 60,000 clients. But behind the suit, in his other company, Eric was named "Best Business Influencer of the Year" winning two Stevies (the Oscars of the business world) for his social media channels. Having... Read More →
In a world that has shifted away from a “time and effort” economy to an “outcomes” economy, The Four Tiers of Followership helps individuals and teams focus less on what they do, and more on how they do it. The Four Tiers of Followership quickly enables one to locate themselves and others inside fundamental orientations and roles of followership. This framework helps demystify what makes some types of followership more valuable in an organization than others, creating a common language for closing expectation gaps many experience with regard to the value of contributions, ongoing learning, promotions, and compensation.
By day, Eric is an equity partner at a financial services firm with more than 60,000 clients. But behind the suit, in his other company, Eric was named "Best Business Influencer of the Year" winning two Stevies (the Oscars of the business world) for his social media channels. Having... Read More →
