Followership Learning Community

With trumpets sounding, we are excited to announce the launch of the ILA Followership Learning Community. You are invited, even encouraged, to check out this newest ILA initiative in its two current manifestations: the Followership Exchange WIKI at http://followership2.pbwiki.com/ and the Followership Forum at https://listserv.umd.edu/archives/ila-followership-forum.html

What is the Followership Learning Community?

Well, of course, it is an experiment. The hypothesis of the experiment is that there are many academics and practitioners in the field of leadership who recognize the vital importance of followership, recognize the need to develop the knowledge and competencies for that end of the leader-follower relationship, and will participate in a community dedicated to this endeavor.

Some may argue that followership is inherently part of leadership studies and that creating a learning community around followership is unnecessary or even counterproductive to the field of leadership. We might respond with an argument similar to that of advocates of affirmative action. Up until now followership has played such a marginal role within leadership studies and development that, at least for awhile, it needs its own forum; this will give its special voice a boost sufficient to eventually achieve the full integration of followership and leadership studies.

As support to the viewpoint above consider the hundreds of leadership conferences and events held annually by many organizations including our own ILA. But the first and only conference on followership that we are aware of only occurred two years ago. It was hosted by the the Kravis Leadership Institute and the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont University under the banner: “Rethinking Followership: New Paradigms, Perspectives and Practices.”

Over two exciting days, nearly 200 participants explored the subject from a broad range of perspectives. There was a widely held sense that the opportunity to meet with others who shared a passion for developing the field was extremely valuable and that ways should be found to continue the dialogue. My two fellow conference hosts, Jean Lipman-Blumen and Ron Riggio, are long time ILA members and current board members. They encouraged considering ILA as the best home for an ongoing community of those interested in followership research, teaching and practice. And thus, with ILA board support, the Followership Community of Learning was born.

Is the Followership Community of Learning for you?

The working premise up to this point has been “Build it and they will come!” Isn’t it instructive how a compact thought package such as “build it and they will come” can enter so deeply into popular culture that it needs no further explanation? It is our hope that the individual and combined genius of a followership community of learning will generate equally durable memes that will transform the cultural images of “follower” in ways that transport the leader-follower relationship to new levels of mutuality, accountability, self-correction and achievement that our world so urgently needs.

Meanwhile, our working premise needs proving. Will you come? The community is inclusive. We envision it being a dynamic community in which new people who discover it or generate a need to converse with its members will flow into the community and add their ideas, experiences and energy. Existing members who satisfy a research or application need may flow out until a new need brings them back. The river we step in will never be the same twice. But we hope it will be deep and invigorating.

We envision that a nucleus of those passionate about followership, and for whom the timing in their lives is right, will take – yes, we can use the word without contradiction – a leadership role in the community, contributing their time, skills and wisdom. We will all have opportunities to practice our best followership skills in supporting the leadership that emerges. This, of course, includes practicing both the art of gratitude for the energy leaders give to the group and the art of constructive dissent when the leaders’ policies or styles seem to undermine the capacity and willingness of the group to pursue its mission. In other words, we will all be on a mutual learning journey!

What will the Learning Community achieve?

Who knows what will emerge from this community of learning?

• We can envision members discovering others who share a passion for some aspect of followership studies forming collaborations for specific projects; unlike the broader community, these may become closed-circles once the participants have formed their goals, roles, norms and strategy and are implementing their project.

• We can envision cross-disciplinary initiatives such as the role of followership in Chinese cultural development, the place for conscience in military hierarchies, the gender factors in leader-follower behaviors, the appropriate relationship of school children to authority in forming a strong, independent citizenry, and on and on, limited only by the imagination, curiosity and dedication of community members.

• In the absence of a formal journal of followership, we can envision working papers being posted for peer review on their way to an established leadership periodical.

• We envision a searchable repository of papers, presentations, illustrative news articles, links to books, videos, gaming sites, virtual worlds, and any other type of knowledge capture that sheds light on our evolving understanding of followership.

In my travels in Mexico this summer I stayed in a small fishing village with no roads that was only accessible by boat from Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s Pacific coast. I arranged to study Spanish with a resident artist who was a native of Chile. When I met him he greeted me by saying “A que te dedicas?” To what are you dedicated? How exhilarating was this greeting when compared to the Washington DC “What do you do?” Dedication is part of the energy required by the best leadership and the best followership. At this time in my life I am dedicated to introducing models of followership into the culture that will correct the imbalances of power and accountability in leader-follower relationships that have led to so many failures and tragedies in human endeavors. We are at a point in our world 's history where we cannot afford too many more of these. It is unreasonable to believe we can produce the deep changes needed by simply finding the right leaders. We must become the right followers. I invite you to share this dedication through the Followership Community of Learning.

Organizer: Ira Chaleff, author The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders; Co-editor: The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations (along with Ron Riggio and Jean Lipman-Blumen)








 

Communities : Followership Learning Community