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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the significance of the role of followership by raising self-awareness of those in organisational hierarchies through the followership intelligence activity. As practitioners, we intentionally spotlight the importance of followership learning and link followership development to the future needs of a thriving organisation through the facilitation of our activity.

This paper outlines the proposed followership intelligence activity (FIA), which includes a progression of questions, group discussions and linkages to adult learning principles, experiential learning and followership theory.

Feedback from authors’ workshops and general observations indicate that once “learning” leaders understand the importance of followership and identify as both followers and leaders, they begin to build and promote work environments open to conversations about the behaviours and skills of exemplary followers.

People cannot change behaviour that they do not notice. However, when leaders begin to identify as both leaders and followers, their openness to learning, developing (self and others) and having followership conversations increases, which promotes both personal awareness and growth. As leaders model and create conversations about exemplary followership skills, they can promote and inspire these behaviours in others within the organisation.

The intention of embedding the FIA into our leadership development programme is to legitimise, honour and promote life-long learning of both leadership and followership. Both roles are vital for a thriving workplace, and they need to be performed with strength, accountability and pride.

“Athlete experience” is a huge focus in modern-day American collegiate athletics, and is beginning to hold as much, if not more, weight than an athlete’s or team’s performance. With new emphasis on athlete well-being, coaches are more motivated to use healthy leader/follower dynamics. This paper aims to examine the follower-centric space of American collegiate athletics to understand how coaches train and develop followership.

Contemporary organization psychology and leadership/followership theories are highlighted in partnership with modern collegiate athletic programming. Author experiences after years of athletic participation and consulting are included, as well as illustrative practical applications beyond athletics.

Although sports have unique leader/follower dynamics, three common cultures are identifiable: personal development, co-collaboration and cohesion. These cultures define followership development in athletics.

Understanding how coaches improve “athlete experience,” increase retention and improve team performance through a follower-centric structure sheds new light on the value of followership in athletics and highlights unique systems in place for corporate settings.

Recognizing the value American collegiate athletics place on healthy followership changes the stigma of followership behavior in a perceived hierarchical structure, changes perceptions of how coaches motivate athlete performance and allows recognition that followership development (as opposed to leadership development) empowers teams to succeed long term.

American collegiate athletics are unknowingly ahead of their time regarding student athlete well-being through followership development. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to explore how coaches emphasize and develop followership through sport.

Business schools, executive training programs, and best-selling books all recognize the importance of leadership, while followership has received limited attention in management training. The purpose of this paper is to present a brief questionnaire, which might be particularly useful for followership development.

A brief questionnaire is presented.

Part of the answers will establish the view that many of us are followers. This will help recognize that both followership and leadership roles are important for organizational success

It is a major challenge to bring followership out of the closet and this tool may help to introduce practical followership development programs in organizations

In today’s rapidly changing workforce environment, organizations seek ways to increase productivity to remain competitive. The central human capital strategy is to attract the best talent and increase individual and team productivity to reach its strategic goals. Human Resources (HR) Professionals are required to attract, retain, train and develop employees to exhibit critical citizenship behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to present organizational-based research on why exemplary followers are considered valuable, as well as contribute to the understanding and discourse of the important role “exemplary followers” have for organizations. Extant followership constructs will be linked to key HR processes to illustrate how organizations can select, develop and retain “exemplary followership” to safeguard organizational sustainability.

A brief overview of HR systems and processes to enhance exemplary followership in employees is presented for training and development purposes. A range of research and practitioner papers are reviewed with the aim of illustrating the importance of and the key constructs for exemplary followership and to suggest practical applications for its development within organizations’ HR processes.

By understanding the importance and implications of exemplary followership development, the author will suggest practical HR tools that may be adopted, whole or in part, thus improving organizational sustainability.

Providing ways for HR to increase exemplary followership through learning and growth might help to expand practical followership development programmes in organizations at all levels.

This paper has drawn on limited followership organizational performance research done in the USA and Ghana and overall research in this area. It has discussed the Followership Continuum Model as a prescriptive tool for organizations to use. All Followership research has simply provided foundational constructs to be used in the original work the author developed for increasing exemplary followership in organizations through HR processes. There is no research like this to the author’s knowledge.

For the past several decades, the field of global leadership has made noteworthy theoretical and empirical progress. The role of a global follower, however, has not been addressed to date. This chapter focuses on global followers and global followership as vital elements of a global leadership process supporting a traditional followership view that “leadership can only occur if there is followership” (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014, p. 83). Two assumptions ground the arguments: global leaders and global followers are engaged in a partnering process of global leadership, and followers and global followers have distinctive characteristics influenced by their specific environments. To explore those assumptions, we start by introducing the followership theory and relevant followership characteristics. Subsequently, we address the role of context in global leader–follower dynamics, extrapolate global followership characteristics from relevant multidisciplinary literature, and offer an example of a global leader–follower partnership. Next, we examine mentions of global followers and global followership in academic and nonacademic literature, and define a global followership construct. The conceptual framework, global followership model, research agenda, and practical implications conclude the manuscript.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits of incorporating the tenants of followership into leadership curriculums as a means of increasing employee engagement in the organization’s mission.

Five years ago, the author reported on the impact instruction in followership had in helping a government agency achieve a significant change in workplace culture. This paper provides an update on the agency’s followership instruction, insights on how development of followership skills can enhance organizational agility, collaboration and engagement and strategies for incorporating followership into a leadership development curriculum.

The literature suggests that followers can partner with the leader to advance organizational objectives and enhance outcomes through proactive participation. Evidence from three followership programs suggests that indoctrination in followership principles leads to better understanding of the impact follower contributions play in achieving mission-related goals.

Much of today’s leadership instruction leverages industrial-age concepts on treatment of followers in the workplace. This type of instruction limits leader/manager thinking on how to best leverage the knowledge-age talents resident in the workforce. This paper suggests that followership instruction increases the potential for followers to make meaningful contributions that enhance organizational agility and competitiveness while simultaneously improving leader strategies for engaging followers.

Instruction in the principles of followership is gaining momentum in academia and in the public and private sectors. Yet, the number of resources for teaching the subject is limited. This paper provides insights into the impact of teaching followership, suggestions on structuring a followership curriculum and recommends resources for creating meaningful instruction.

Over time, the role of followers within leadership discourse has gained greater status, leading to followers being acknowledged as significant actors in the leadership process. This has led to the development of follower-centric leadership studies, as well as the more emergent research area of followership, with followership research having the specific intention to find out about followers from the perspective of followers. In this paper, the authors provide a review of role-based followership approaches, and implicit leadership and followership theories as a basis to build a case for follower implicit followership theories (FIFTs) as a focus area for future research.

The authors conducted a review of seminal and current role-based followership literature, with a specific focus on FIFTs and followership studies conducted within the African context.

Implicit theories have been an area of leadership research that has added much value, and as such could do the same for development of followership research. FIFTs as a research area are nascent and, as such, should continue to be explored in order to expand our understanding of followership.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first literature reviews to have a specific focus on FIFTs, as well as on followership research conducted within the African context.

Followership is the free will recognition of leadership in the commitment toward realization of the collectively adopted organization vision and culture. The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between project managers’ leadership and their followership. Most project managers are both leaders and followers at the same time, but research typically investigates only their leadership. This ignores followership as an important aspect in understanding and predicting behavior, and further in the selection of project managers.

The method used for this paper is the explanatory in nature and a deductive approach, within which the above research hypothesis is tested through quantitative techniques. Data are collected through a nation-wide survey in China. Data analysis was done through factor analysis, canonical correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The results show that transformational leadership is positively correlated with transformational followership and transactional followership, and that transactional leadership is negatively correlated with transactional followership.

The paper supports a deeper investigation into leadership and followership theories. A model for both leadership and followership is developed. The findings from this paper will guide organizations to choose the project managers.

The originality lies in the new way to examine the relationship between leadership and followership. It is the first study on the relationship of project managers. Its value is new insights, which introduced a new perspective to understand leadership and followership.