The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations

Part 2. Effective Followership

It is one thing to write about the need for more attention to followership. It is another to give it this attention in professional training programs and in corporate culture change efforts. In this part of the book we examine several efforts to do just this.

These examples are chosen not because of their proven record but because they represent early efforts to effectively introduce the subject of followership to individuals, groups, and organizations. The authors share their reasons for focusing on followership to support other core values and change efforts, and their experiences with creating new awareness and skills.

The effort to promote individual and group development in any field is greatly assisted by models that help those engaged in the effort understand existing styles and behavior, their consequences, and options for making different choices. In this section we introduce several additional models for describing follower behaviors and the intricate relationship of followership and leadership.

Our purpose in this section is to stimulate thinking about how to introduce the concepts of effective followership, regardless of the model or synthesis of models one chooses. What are strategies for building support for an empowered style of followership? What are pitfalls that must be avoided? What techniques can help followers and leaders perform these roles differently as they occupy and move between them? How can they build the needed skills for ...