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General Blog Posts, Archives

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Recent blogs will be listed in order of their posting but, after about thirty days, they will be arranged here in rough alphabetical order.  If one blog is written in direct response to another blog. however. it will be placed after the blog that initiated that response. These policies will enable us to stay abreast of timely discussions without losing control over the citations as a whole.--EHN, editor

 

 

Bradley, Elizabeth H., "Paradox and Strategy in Global Health Leadership," Huffington Post ( 06/29/09) discusses the  inaugural conference held by Yale University's new Global Health Leadership Institute (GHLI) on June 15 - 19, 2009.  Most of proceedings are tangential to  leader/follower relations but she includes comments she made along with Yale Professor  David Berg. Bradley herself directs both the Health Management Program and Global Health Initiatives at the Yale School of Public Health. here are some of the pertinent comments:

 

"Lastly, and perhaps most momentously, there was the paradoxical discussion of leadership and followership by Yale Professor David Berg and Elizabeth Bradley, Professor and Director of the Yale Global Health Initiative. Both depicted leadership as a role rather than a quality, and banished the thought of a checklist of "leadership characteristics" that would ensure success. Instead, Berg suggested that exceptional leaders lead where they are able and follow where they are not. Furthermore, he posited that no trait was necessary in the leader if it were present in the relationship between the person in the leadership role and the people in followership roles. In this way, leadership is all about relationships, with cognitive and emotional "give and take" between leaders and followers - no matter how reluctant or dissonant a follower may be."

 

Chaleff, Ira "Five Good Reasons to Challenge the Hierarchy," Author Lists Blog October 28, 2009 

 

This blog post applies some of Ira Chaleff's ideas about courageous followerhsip to challenging one's boss or one's boss's boss's boss. Less concerned than Ira's writings usually are with diplomacy and the "art" of followership, this is more of a morale-building call to action. Some respondents have replied with experiences from their own life and opportunity to comment is still open.

 

Chaleff, Ira  "Albus Dumbledore and Followership," Courageous Followership Blog, 12/10/2010

 

Chaleff, Ira "Intelligent Disobedience: What Guide Dogs and Service Dogs Know that Humans Can Learn," Courageous Followership Blog 10/06/2010

 

Chow, Wilfred  "Banks and governance: Will the U.S Financial Reform Act be enough to restore trust in Wall Street?" Ethical Corporation (2010) Part of the problem for banks is their closed culture, something regulation will not be able to change. .

 

Cohen, Gary "Followership," "Just Ask Leadership," CO2n.d.

[Introduction] Although the importance of a good leader cannot be denied, followers also play an equally important, if often overlooked, role in the success of any group or organization. We believe the strength of any team is in the followers and there can be no leaders without followers, but the vast majority of research to date has focused on the leadership side of this equation. Researchers have only recently given serious consideration to the topics of followers and followership. This research has revealed several interesting questions and findings.

 

 Cureton, Linda "The Art of Change Followership," NASA CIO Blog March 22, 2009

 

Dolgin, Elie "Follow The Fish Leader,"

The Scientist.com 

 (01/29/09--free sign-in may be needed) summarizes a new study on stickleback fish released in Current Biology (01/29/09). The study, lead by Andrea Manica, University of Cambridge, reveals several personality traits previously thought to be uniquely human and exmines how these play out in leader/follower behavior. According the blog posting, paired leader and follower fish "responded to each other's movements, which led to stronger leaders, more faithful followers, and, ultimately, greater foraging efficiency -- a phenomenon driven by what the authors call 'social feedback.' Manica is quoted as saying, "The behavior you get from the pair is totally different from what you see in individuals, which is the result of this feedback,"  and he surmises that "the fundamental rules that lead to compromise and synchronized activities ought to be there [in humans]." This study is limited to dyads though another study of somewhat larger groups (conducted by Jens Krause at the University of Leeds) is also mentioned.

 

 

 

Doty, Elizabeth "Preparing for Courage: The MBA Oath," Worklore n.d. [2010]

"I have been excited about the prospect of clarifying our professional commitments as leaders and managers, and putting them in the context of the power and responsibility we hold in modern free market economies. Yet I also understand the questions about whether, having signed an oath, we are likely to act any differently under pressure."

 

"Not knowing how susceptible we are to situational influences can lead to less ethical behavior because we are unprepared and ill-equipped to counter these powerful situational forces – or fail to create the set of relationships, touchstones and practices that enable us to self-activate our values regardless of the environment."

 

The author discusses the dangers of situational compromise and creates a chart of "ten misconceptions about compromise and ethics that individuals once held and later questioned, or that social psychology and organizational studies suggest may not be accurate."

 

 Dean, Jeremy "7 Reasons Leaders Fail" is a blog post by that discusses the research appearing in a published article ( (Vugt, Hogan & Kaiser, 2008  "Leadership, followership, and evolution: Some lessons from the past,"  referenced towards the bottom of this page. The blog post's author extracts 7 reasons from the published article showing not only why leaders fail but how unhappy leader/follower relationships are generated.

 

Enos, Warren "Dynamic Followership, " California Council of Chapters, Military Officers Association of America (September 30, 2008). In his blog entry, the author asserts that officers are better trained to be leaders than in how to behave as followers and that this has serious consequences for the host organization, which depends on the volunteer activity. He advocates that the membership learn to  behave as  followers and to make the follower role "dynamic, synergistic, and satisfying."

 

 

Flipskills Consulting of Canada has published a white paper on followership (2008) in .pdf. On its website, it has also compiled a list of readings and links to what it considers some of the best followership resources on the internet. They have recently published the first and second articles of a 3-part series on followership in the journal: Industrial and Commercial Training (see Published Articles for details and a link).

 

Francis, Glenn has posted two blog entries about followership:

 

The first, "Followership"  (February 19, 2009) underscores the mutualoty and interconnectedness of the leader and follower roles,  quoting and taking partial issue with Warren Bennis.

 

The second,"Really - what is followership?" (February 23, 2009)) defines followership in an active way:

 

"followership is an active choice to agree with the elevation of a person from the ingroup to a leadership position and to engage in activities that support the elevation of that person as long as the person fills an ingroup need and guides ingroup action in accordance with a set of shared ideas, values and interests."

 

Geisler, Jill "What Great Bosses Know About Managing Up," SuperVision, Poynter Online, April 5, 2010

This blog seems to be associated with a podcast, part of a series,  "What Great Bosses Know," sponsored by The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. The Poynte Institute's leadership and management expert Jill Geisler shares practical information on leadership and management pertinent  for bosses in newsrooms andmany other walks of life. She addresses some of the challenges faced by supervisors in their role as followers and draws heavily upon the insights and precenpts of Robert Kelley.

 

Gray, Larry N., " Stress and Job Satisfaction," MyLead360: Lessons on leadership and Followership 4/4/2010

This post is the  third in a series called, "Aligning for Job Productivity" and addresses  the needs of followers. It helps those in an organization pinpoint the causes of their dissatisfaction and determine whether to stay and be satisfied, stay and make trouble, or leave. It does not look at ways of exerting influence those in a more powerful position or at ways of influencing the organization from below. Nevertheless, its diagnostic tools are useful.

 

--Elisabeth Higgins Null

 

 

Grudzinski, Geoffrey Followership, Experience and Significance

is a blog  whose purpose is "to share with its audience the roles that followers can play within any organization, regardless of position, competence, or confidence. Each member of a society has a place within that society and has gifts that can be fitted to the benefit of that polis. We, as individuals within that society, need to learn how to extract these gifts, not only from others, but from ourselves. We find ourselves in a generation where leadership training and development takes a much higher place over followership training and development, when in reality, the leaders have the most training to begin with, helping them get them into the current capacities they carry ... Sure, they need development too, but we all do; we all need to be developed to be better critical thinkers, be more outspoken about this critical thought, and be confident in our positions as to defend them with credibility. This is what can establish a good leader/follower relationship."

 

Hanson, Kevin (aka "Groundhog") Following Well (07/24/09)

 

Hanson is an inner-city pastor interested in servant leadership and other followership styles. He has established this blog to exchange ideas and resources about followership and links to several videos from the blog itself. He lists major books on  followership and leader-follower relations.

 

Heskett, James "Are Followers About To Get Their Due?" is an online forum (07/03/08), now closed,  at Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge. Barbara Kellerman's Followership and the query she addresses, "where good leaders would be without good followers"  serve as the initial talking point. There are 77 comments to Heskett's introductory article and he summarizes their range and breadth.

 

Holzschlag, Molly E.   "Follow You Will You Follow Me" is an entry on the blog, Molly.com (April 21, 2008) that discusses the meaning and usage of "follower" among those who use Twitter, the communications tool for quick text messages. As the blog's author, Molly E. Holzschlag, says:"The simple Twitter interface tells us who is “follower” to our Twitters. You can compare this with who you are “following” and a finely tuned interface will tell you who follows you, leaving all of us confused as to whether leading or following bears more persuasion." Alexandra Zoltai posts a comment containing a brief bbliography of articles on followership. Holzschlag is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, author, and Group Lead for the Web Standards Project (WaSP). Among her thirty-plus books is the The Zen of CSS Design, co-authored with Dave Shea.

 

Keilar, Neal "Leader, follower or accompanist: being the best agency partner to your client," Agency Babylon (07/07/10) Blog looks at leader-follower relationships in the context of client-creative agency relationships.

 

Kellerman, Barbara "General McChrystal's Failure of Followership," "The Conversation," Harvard Business Review, June 2, 2010

 

 Kellerman, Barbara "New Wine in New Bottles: Iran's Lessons on Followership" Washington Post (06/22/09)

 

Kellerman explores how 21st century leaders are losing power and influence while followers are gaining more in the light of Iran's recent unrest. "[That] story is far larger than this single situation suggests. Underlying Iran's power dynamic is a long-term shift worldwide, one in which leaders of every stripe have less clout than they did before and their followers more. Hard on the heels of the changing culture are the changes in technology. While the one without the other would not have amounted to much, together they are creating a sea change in the human condition."

 

 

 

Kellerman,Barbara on the faculty of at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author, most recently, of Bad Leadership and Followership, has begun commenting weekly  on followership in a blog, "On Leadership," hosted by the The Washington Post. So far, three blogs have appeared, "Bottom's Up: Why Followers Matter" (01/13/09), "Lessons from Madoff's Minions"  (01/20/2009), and "Hillary Leads -- and Follows -- As She Takes Over at State" (01/27/2009).

 

Kurian,Prasad "Simplicity at the Other Side of Complexity"  has an entry that discusses the different roles leaders often assume when they are in a position of followership.

 

McCrimmon, Mitch "Beyond Leaders and Followers," Lead 2XL ()6/26/2010)

MCCrimmon continues to develop his argument for abandoning what he terms  "the language of followership" in complex organizations.

 

McKee, Annie "Are We at the Mercy of Our Emotions When Choosing Our Leaders," is a "Conversation Starter" [blog] by Annie Mckee,  Harvard Business Publishing, Sept. 5, 2008.

 

Meghan B. "Gleeful Followership," Leadership Theory and Behavior, September 27

The author analyzes the television program, "Glee." She says "as I've watched the characters develop over the first few episodes, styles of followership have become evident. Each eccentric character of the high school glee club fits right into one of Robert Kelley's followership patterns." She then discusses the characters and their relationship to Kelley's enumerated types.

 

Morris, Robert  "Interview: ira Chaleff," First Friday Book Synopsis July 6, 2010

This interview draws heavily on the new chapter in The Courageous Follower's 3rd edition on leader-follower hierarchical relations and connects his insights with the non-partisan work he has done for years (with The Congressional Management Foundation) coaching members of congress and their staff.

 

Morris, Bob '

Question #39: What Is Followership?

 "First Friday Book Synopsis," April 20, 2009

 

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders. In this post, Morris specifically mentions Liunda Hopper's essay from The Art of Followership, " “Courageous Followers, Servant-Leaders, and Organizational Transformations" and the "five common barriers to engaging 'disaffected, disgruntled, distrustful employees who appear reticent to make a commitment to and be accountable for work or decisions' she identifies.' "

 

McCrimmon, Mitch  "The Death of Followership," Lead2XL, May 15, 2010

 

Chaleff, Ira "I'm Not Following Mitch" June 9, 2010 (a response to the above article)

 

Update: There are additional comments written by Mitch McCrimmons in answer to Ira Chaleff's rebuttal beneath McCrimmon's  blog posting above.

 

 

Nowack, Ken, "Leadership Lessons from Ajax the Seeing Eye Dog #6: The Neurobiology of Followership" (07/12/09)

 

This blog entry discusses the "neurobiology of followership" in lay terms and ruminates on research showing that "wanting to fit in and follow what others do (the 'everybody’s doing it affect') seems to be hardwired." Reasons that might impel this behavor are explored, with an emphasis on followership as compliant behavior.

 

 

Nees, Tom "

Invisible Leaders" (04/08/09) is a posting on the blog, Leading To Serve that discusses how "some leaders guide from behind the scenes without position or authority" and relates this discussion to the concept of servant leadership and to the often invisible authority of those not in formal positions of power. He mentions Barbara Kellerman's observation that hidden leaderships may often be good followers.

  

Nees, Tom  "

When Followers Refuse to Follow - What Smart Leaders Do Engaging with Bystanders, Participants, Activists and Diehards"  (3/22/09) is a posting in Leading To Serve  that urges leaders to pay attention and learn from engaged followers and does so while discussing Barbara Kellerman's Followership and her classification of follower types.

 

 

Nees, Tom "

Five Advantages of Leading from the Middle," Leading to Serve (11/18/09)," discusses ways those in middle management can effect policy from a subordinate position within their organization. It also dicusses the advantages of serving in that capactiy.

 

 

Nees, Tom “Drink the Kool-Aid - A Lesson for Followers and Leaders." (11/24/08) and “

What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers (11/17/08) appear in  Tom Nees's blog, Leading To Serve, a component of the "Leading To Serve" learning community he started as a means to advance leadership consulting and coaching in nonprofit and faith-based communities.  "Drink the Kool-Aid" looks at Ira Chaleff's  concept of the courageous follower in the light of a recent PBS documentary on the Jonestown massacre. “What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers” presents Barbara Kellerman's classification of followers based on their levels of engagement.

 

Petty, Art "Leadership Caffeine: Strengthen as a Leader by Developing as a Follower," Management Excellence, 10/18/10

Blog aims at practitioners and, in this particular post, posits "Six Ways To Grow and Develop as a Follower Without Compromising Your Integrity" which seem to be independently arrived at. They cover several key points stressed by current followership literature.--EHN

 

Pitron. John Dr. "Followership is Leadership: The Leadership-Exemplary Followership Exchange Model," Knol (n.d.)

 

Leadership is not one-dimensional; leadership is system thinking in multiple dimensions. In terms of systems thinking, the inclusion of organizational performers (followers) in the leadership process complements the notion that leaders are only responsible for about 20% of the work that is completed in an organization (Kelley, 1992). There are different styles of followers and mainly the exemplary follower provides for a self-leadership style from within the follower themselves (Kelley, 1992). The exemplary follower style can be enhanced through Leader-Exemplary Follower Exchanges (LEFX). This paper introduces a model for exploring the cycle of Leadership-Exemplary Followership Exchanges

 

Robinson, NJ "Leadership:101: Followership pt 1," Achieve and Deliver, September 28, 2009

The author maintains that leaders can get good training for leadership through experience serving as followers. The author mentions  Kelley's models and then  looks at how Chaleff "draws a very real correlation between the characteristics of an effective follower and the behavior of a leader."

 

 Rollert, John Paul hosts a series of blogs with several student entries on followership for a course he is teaching on leadershipat Harvard University's Summer School(2010). Most of the entries look at work from a follower's perspective as set forth by key cultural works, ancient and modern. You will find several entries on followership in the sidebar and here are two examples:

 

"Ehrenreich's Followership Analysis," Gramsci (07/26/10)

"Followership: 'Office Space' " clip from film included], Arendt (07/16/10)

 

Simmons, Bret L. "Courage to Participate in Transformation of the Leader," P.O.B: Positive Organizational Behavior, September 8, 2009 

 

"We accept as entirely reasonable the notion that is a leader’s responsibility to first confront and then help a follower transform inappropriate behavior.  But we have a very hard time with the notion that in right relationship, it is just as much the follower’s responsibility to help the leader transform."

 

Sivers, Derek "Leadership Lessons From Dancing Guy" (10/02/11)

Transcript of short talk before TED Conference accompanied by influential, viral video.

 

Shenkman, Michael  "The Crisis In Followership,"  Leader Pathways. May 29, 2010

 

Simmons, Bret L.  "Partnership"  P.O.B: Positive Organizational Behavior,  August 26, 2009

 

Explores the rhetoric and strategies needed by both leaders and followers  to transfrom complaints into more effective behavior and positive solutions. Doing so, argues the author, rests on both leaders and followers regarding themselves as partners dedicated to a common purpose.

 

 

Solovy, Adam "Leading Is A Skill, So Is Following," HospitalConnect.com, May 15, 2005

This author enumerates some of the qualities to be found in effective followers.

 

Sutton. Bob "The Power of the First Follower," April 2010

Sutton refers his readers to the dancing man video by  Derek Sivers and summarizes the main points Sivers is trying to make, especially that "the first follower is one who creates a leader." Sutton adds that that"another way to think about the leader here is he succeeded because he was sensitive to what would motivate the first follower and the other early followers."  Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and a Professor of Organizational Behavior, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

 

Sutton, Bob "Insights About Leaders and Followers from an Evolutionary Perspective" is a short, undated review by Bob Sutton from his blog,  "Work Matters" which reviews the article by M. Van Vugt, R. Hogan,  & R. Kaiser  (2008). "Leadership, followership, and evolution: Some lessons from the past." American Psychologist, 63, 182-196. A full .pdf of this article may be found by clinking on Van Vugt and scrolling down his list of published works.

 

Tauberer, Josh "Numerical Methods For Determining leadership and Ideology In Congress," Govtrack Blog, GovtrackUS. 12/28/2010

 

White, Ronald F.  "Leadership, Culture, and the Market" (06/06/10) and "A Libertarian Theory of Organizational Leadership. (06/08/10),  Freedom's Philosopher.

 

These two blog posts, on one page (accompanied by an earlier post on public vs. private trade unions and a four-part series on F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom) argue that while, historically, there may have been anthropological reasons for strong, centralized leadership vested in one person, humans are now structuring their organizations in such a way that "we need less powerful leaders and a lot fewer of them." With the recent rise of political movements and politicians associated with libertarianism, correctly or incorrectly, these posts present the classic libertarian case for distributed leadership and smaller government while shedding light on the role of followers and leader/follower relations.

 

 Wilkinson, David John ((aka "Plato the Fish") Ambiguity Advantage, (06/20/08). 

 

  This blog has posted a series on followership. The first entry, "Theoretical theory and practical, pragmatic, practice" (05/14/08) looks at theory and the theoretical from the perspective of "a company owner" interested in staff training.The second entry, "Leaders and followership; the reality" acknowledges that the concept of followership "is starting to make the move from the academic journals and conferences to operational thinking" and that "a number of organisations have seized on the wording and developed their own (often less considered and more manipulative) versions of the term." With that in mind, the author reviews some of the central academic literature. He discusses and compares typologies of followership by Barabara Kellerman (06/24/08), Robert Kelley (06/23/08), Abraham Zaleznik (07/02/08) and Ira Chaleff (07/21/08) and also critiques models of followership.

 

In his discussion of Ira Chaleff's typology, he makes the first public acknowledgement of  "The Followership Exchange," referring to it as "rather useful wiki." Chaleff's response to Wilkinson's discussion, originally posted as a comment, is also posted as a  main entry

(07/22/08)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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