Global Followership Conference

In existing research, followership has been explored predominantly with quantitative methods. While quantitative research is valuable, it cannot provide in-depth exploration and understanding of the phenomenon. Despite a call by Uhl-Bien and colleagues for more balance in methodological and philosophical perspectives as early as 2014, there is still a dearth of qualitative research that provides insights into the basic understanding of followership. In the last years, a growing number of PhD students researching followership have applied qualitative methods. However, more such research is needed to achieve methodological balance. This symposium aims to present examples of current, high-quality qualitative research and provide insights to the methodological choices made and obstacles encountered in the process.

Employee engagement is a hot topic for organizations because it significantly impacts just about every outcome from customer satisfaction to profitability to turnover. However, the way we think about it and try and improve it in organizations is driven by top-down, leadership thinking. Frankly, it doesn't work (well). In this highly interactive session you will learn how to apply a followership-leadership lens to engagement that changes everything. You take away practical ideas that can be implemented immediately and, for researchers, it opens up an entirely new way to research it.

Lindsay is an engaging facilitator and Polarity Thinking™ Master Trainer who brings a depth of knowledge and a global perspective that supports seeing the known in a new way. Liz is a consulting psychologist, graduate of Polarity Thinking™ Mastery Program and Past Chair of the Creative Education Foundation Board. Together, they will unpack the key concepts of Polarity Thinking and change how you think about leadership and followership forever. This approach avoids the narrow view of the world caused by false-choice, either-or thinking, and instead gives individuals, teams, and organizations the mindset and toolset for utilization of multiple viewpoints, including those of both leadership and followership.

Lindsay is an engaging facilitator and Polarity Thinking™ Master Trainer who brings a depth of knowledge and a global perspective that supports seeing the known in a new way. Liz is a consulting psychologist, graduate of Polarity Thinking™ Mastery Program and Past Chair of the Creative Education Foundation Board. Together, they will unpack the key concepts of Polarity Thinking and change how you think about leadership and followership forever. This approach avoids the narrow view of the world caused by false-choice, either-or thinking, and instead gives individuals, teams, and organizations the mindset and toolset for utilization of multiple viewpoints, including those of both leadership and followership.

For all of the buzz around followership and its importance in any conversation about leadership, there are precious few followership courses offered at either universities or in corporate leadership training departments. Student feedback consistently reveals that followership content and courses rank highest in student engagement/learning within the leadership discipline at the co-presenters’ university. This interactive workshop has been refined, updated, and built upon the popular “teaching followership” workshop conducted at the 2024 Global Followership Conference, combines a variety of elements designed to engage participants, from short videos and group breakouts to discussion questions and hands-on table activities.

If role-clarity boosts partnership, perspective-taking promises to enhance role-agility and performance. This interactive session invites participants to learn from "preflecting," acting, and reflecting as we practice performing leader and follower roles in teams. Ideal for educators and practitioners, we'll explore themes in followership education and the benefits of "role-ing" within the process for leader-follower learning.

This interactive session explores how traditional definitions of leaders and followers may unintentionally encourage passivity, potentially contributing to democratic erosion. Can a new definition of "follower" save democracy? And how can the followership community impact political engagement in democracies

Cameron and Quinn’s (2006) Competing Values Framework (CVF) offers four quadrants of organizational culture types, each ranging in their focus of external vs. internal and level of control. In this facilitated session, we will engage the audience in a robust discussion on how the four organizational culture types may attract or repel certain types of followers, centering on the followership typologies defined by Chaleff (2009) and Kellerman (2008). The outcome aims to be a greater understanding of organizational culture’s influence in how well followership types thrive in each cultural typology.

As a human mode of operation, story is an essential framework and clarifying tool for followers and leaders alike. As relational connections have multiplied and digitized, and story exposure is at an all-time high, our “story intelligence” can become taxed to the point of paralysis. Participants will actively engage others in storytelling games and activities to better understand personal and collective followership by identifying as characters within stories. Through this, we aim to refine our understanding of ourselves as responsible values-actors within our communities and hone our first line of defense against being passive “watchers” in the postmodern age.