Outline:
Part 1: Defining and Redefining Followership
Part 2: Effective Followership
Part 3: The Pitfalls and Challenges of Followership
Part 4: Followers and Leaders: Research and Practice, and the Future
My take-aways and introspections
The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and
Organizations
Researchers widely recognize that followership is an emerging concept. The majority of
people, particularly in organizations, are more often followers than leaders but until
recently the role of the follower has not been considered an inherently valuable position, or
a role with a specialized set of skills, motivations, and the power to enhance organizational
potential. The world and the organizations in it have been viewed through the
leader-centric lens and little attention has been paid to those who do not lead. Followership
recognizes that followers can be in a position to better recognize the day to day events
within an organization, that organizations can actively cultivate good followers, and that
sometimes following is more difficult than leading. My motivation for choosing this book
was simply to explore the study of an idea that we did not explore in class, and to learn
something new.
This book brings together the essays of 31 contributors who participated in the Kravis-De
Roulet Leadership Conference on February 24-25, 2006. The material has been co-edited
by Ronald E. Riggio, Ira Chaleff, and Jean Lipman-Blumen. The material is organized as
follows: A brief Foreword by James MacGregor Burns and then an Introduction by Warren
Bennis, followed by 23 “author chapters” that are divided within four Parts: “Defining and
Redefining Followership” (Chapters 1-5), “Effective Followership” (Chapters 6-12), “The
Pitfalls and Challenges of Followership” (Chapters 13-17), and “Followers and Leaders:
Research, Practice and the Future (Chapters 18-23). Since the book touches upon so many
views and models, I will talk about one chapter from each of the four sections of the book
to give a comprehensive overview. The chapter that I have chosen from each section is one
that I feel is an accurate representation of that section, as well as the one that I found most
interesting.
Part 1: Defining and Redefining Followership
Chapter 1: Rethinking Followership
Robert Kelley distinguishes followers in terms of their behavior and personality attributes
and defines the different styles of followership by considering two different behavioral
dimensions: one dimension measures the degree to which followers think independently
and critically and the other assesses the level of engagement whether active or passive in
