The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations - Hardcover

Leadership is a topic that has been well-examined by scholars, consultants, and the media. By contrast, the study of followers has been largely ignored. As this book reveals, the leader-follower dynamic is far more complex than has been previously imagined.

The Art of Followership puts leader-follower interaction at the forefront of discussion. It examines the multiple roles followers play and their often complex relationship to leaders. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from the burgeoning field of leadership/followership studies, this groundbreaking book outlines how followers contribute to effective leadership and to organizations overall.

Drawing from various disciplines—from philosophy, to psychology and management, to education—the book defines followership and its myriad meanings. The Art of Followership explores the practice and research that promote positive followership and reveals the part that followers play in setting the standards and formulating the culture and policies of the group. The contributors include new models of followership and explore fresh perspectives on the contributions that followers make to groups, organizations, societies, and leaders. The book also explores the most current research on followership and includes insights and perspectives on the future of leader-follower relationships.

Perspectives from The Art of Followership

"In many ways, great followership is harder than leadership. It has more dangers and fewer rewards, and it must routinely be exercised with much more subtlety. But great followership has never been more important." —Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor, University of Southern California, and author, Leaders and On Becoming A Leader

"Thirty years ago, I wrote that 'one of the most serious failures in the study of leadership has been the bifurcation between the literature on leadership and the literature on followership.' Surely, I added, it was 'time that the two literatures be brought together.' I know of no work that faces this challenge so well as The Art of Followership. I expect it to be a landmark work in the complexities of the leader-follower dynamic." —James MacGregor Burns, Woodrow Wilson Professor (emeritus) at Williams College; author, Leadership; and senior editor, The Encyclopedia of Leadership

"The field of followership is still in its infancy. It is rare that people get a chance to build and shape a new area of inquiry. Collectively, we can grow the followership field so that it makes powerful contributions to society." —Robert E. Kelley, professor, Carnegie Mellon University, and author, The Power of Followership and In Praise of Followership