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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.

While there is an extensive body of theory and research on leadership, less attention has been paid to other work roles, including follower roles. The purpose of this paper is to explain and justify a three factor model of followership as a basis for exploring the role of followers, establishing what makes an effective follower and discussing the training and development of followers. This is the first part of a three part paper. It reviews previous theory and research on followership, before describing the three factor model of leadership and considering how it can be applied to followership.

The first part of this paper consists mainly of a literature review on followership, and a description of the three factor model of leadership. The second and third parts of the paper outline the approach to the empirical research.

The overall findings of this three part paper: provide empirical evidence to support the three factor model of leadership; justify the extension of the model to other work roles, including follower roles; allow the development of a three factor framework of follower behaviours.

The three factor model of followership shows that followership and leadership are not fundamentally different. Indeed, the skills that leaders need in their roles develop out of and build on those needed in follower roles. The essential difference is in the contrasting roles of leader and follower in which they are used. The research findings are based mainly on individuals in the public sector in the UK. Further research on other populations would be useful.

Effective organisations need effective followers and effective leaders. Moreover, the skills of the effective leader develop out of and build on those of the effective follower.

The view of followership expressed in this paper is a challenge to the widely held pre-occupation with leadership and, more generally, to the cult of leadership.

This is the first published attempt to apply the three factor model of leadership to followership. Evidence is presented on the internal reliability and external validity of measures of leadership and followership. Scales were developed to distinguish between leader and follower roles and used to describe behaviours characteristic of such roles, as well as behaviours valued in these roles, based on 360 degree assessments.

The purpose of this study is to determine to what extent there is a predictive relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and followership behaviors within medical organizations in the USA. This is the second part of a two-part paper. It uses a revised followership instrument and an OCB instrument to determine if there is a predictive relationship between OCB and followership behaviors.

Part 1 of this quantitative survey-based empirical study used confirmatory factor analysis on an existing instrument and exploratory factor analysis on a revised instrument. Part 2 used regression analysis to explore the predictive relationship between followership and organizational citizenship.

The overall findings of this two-part paper show that organizational citizenship has a significant predictive impact on followership behaviors.

Participants in this study work exclusively in the health care industry; future research should expand to other industries and other large organizations that have many followers but few managerial leaders.

As organizational citizenship can be developed and there is a predictive relationship between organizational citizenship and followership, organizations can develop professional development for individual followers. Managers and other leaders can learn how to develop OCB, and thus followership in several ways: onboarding, coaching, mentoring and executive development.

Part 2 of this paper demonstrates the predictive impact that OCB can have in developing high performing followers.

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 has been recognized as an essential component of leadership studies as evidenced by growth of research within this area. To keep pace with the growth of this research, it is time to bring followership into the leadership classroom. This paper proposes a case-based exercise with two main learning objectives: (1) to help students broaden their perceptions about followership, and (2) to promote followership behaviors that actively contribute to organizations. This exercise includes large group discussion, peer coaching, and individual work to facilitate these endeavors. The paper concludes with suggested methods for assessment that include both self- and peer- ratings, as well as open-ended reflection.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of employees’ reactions towards organizational change in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. Furthermore, to understand the importance of followership it has been analyzed as a moderating variable in the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of employees’ reactions.

A mixed methods study design was applied to investigate the factors underlying the phenomenon of transformational leadership and organizational change. A quantitative research design was followed by qualitative research questions to get more in-depth insights into the used relationships. The primary purpose of the qualitative study design was to support and strengthened the results of the main quantitative research design.

The results of the study showed that transformational leadership style was positively related to all three factors of employees’ reactions (frequency of change, trust in management and employees’ participation) towards organizational change. Moreover, followership has a significant effect on the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of employees’ reaction.

This study suggests that for successful implementation of change in organizations, the employees play an important role and that managers with transformational leadership behaviour play a critical role in shaping positive change reactions. This study also highlights that both transformational leadership and followership are essential elements in shaping recipients’ reactions, with active followers contributing to the role of leadership in the change process.

This study is the first attempt specifically in Asian context to highlight the role of followership as a moderating variable in leadership theory in the organizational change 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.

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.

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.

The overall purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent organizational citizenship behaviors predict followership behaviors within medical organizations in the USA. This is the first part of a two-part article. Part 1 will refine an existing followership instrument. Part 2 will explore the relationship between followership and organizational citizenship.

Part 1 of this survey-based empirical study used confirmatory factor analysis on an existing instrument followed by exploratory factor analysis on the revised instrument. Part 2 used regression analysis to explore to what extent organizational citizenship behaviors predict followership behaviors.

The findings of this two-part paper show that organizational citizenship has a significant impact on followership behaviors. Part 1 found that making changes to the followership instrument provides an improved instrument.

Participants in this study work exclusively in the health-care industry; future research should expand to other large organizations that have many followers with few managerial leaders.

As organizational citizenship can be developed, if there is a relationship between organizational citizenship and followership, organizations can provide professional development opportunities for individual followers. Managers and other leaders can learn how to develop organizational citizenship behaviors and thus followership in several ways: onboarding, coaching, mentoring and career development.

In Part 1, the paper contributes an improved measurement for followership. Part 2 demonstrates the impact that organizational citizenship behavior can play in developing high performing followers.