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This paper provides leadership educators with a resource for teaching followership. It presents a lesson for teaching students about followership in contemporary society by including key concepts and follower characteristics followed by class activities and assignments designed to engage students in active learning and self-reflective processes. A dose of whimsy enhances this lesson with the use of a YouTube video that eloquently and humorously illustrates the crucial role followers play in organizational life.

TED Talks are short videos of experts talking about a variety of topics. This paper outlines six TED Talks that connect with the leadership literature and topics commonly taught with an explanation of how they enhance teaching about a corresponding leadership topic. The researcher shares how introducing TED talks related to leadership can stimulate critical thinking about leadership while keeping the class interesting.

Leadership is filled with concepts that often do not have an agreed upon definition. The purpose of this paper is to share a learning activity that provokes students’ thinking about the nature of leadership using six leadership definitions. This activity is a dynamic starting place to explore what leadership is and is not, how it differs from management, a historical perspective of leadership, and students’ diverse perspectives about leadership. This activity is a straightforward, critical thinking exercise that offers a conduit to a deeper understanding that how we define leadership says something about what we value in a leader. We suggest modifications to this definitional exercise and discuss how to use it in different teaching environments.

While Dolly Parton may be best known for her distinguished music career, her philanthropic and community work is equally impressive. This paper explains how Parton’s work in these areas can illustrate the principles of authentic leadership from a popular media perspective. Parton’s popularity and wide range of fans across generations and demographics make a case study of her work a poignant and effective pedagogical tool as an introduction to authentic leadership. We share an array of resources in popular media that includes videos, podcasts, and popular press articles and offer questions to facilitate class discussion and about the qualities of an authentic leader.