I have had occasion to read a bit more on followership recently. Brad Jackson and Ken Parry deal with the term and its scholarship in their recent and valuable book, A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Leadership. The Art of Followership gathers a set of provocative chapters on the topic. The authors and editors of both books have interviews in a recent and forthcoming newsletter of the ILA.

Initially, I was very put off by the term because it seems to imply hierarchy and authority as companions to leadership. We have spent a great deal of scholarship over the past 30 years trying to distinguish these terms.

Ironically, the premises of this scholarship help us make these distinctions clearly. First, leadership is distributed through a group–family, group, organization, community, polity, globe–and each person has the responsibility to maintain autonomous moral decision making. Second, the followership scholarship looks to the Holocaust and the social psychological research of Milgram, Asch, Zimbardo, and others to suggest what happens when people suspend that autonomous moral decision making because of authority or group pressure.

Two landmark studies, Fromm’s Escape from Freedom and Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty support further the incredible importance of speaking truth to power. So there you have it leadership entails speaking truth within a hierarchy of power and to people with authority. Followership, despite the suggestion of the term, requires leadership without authority.

More to follow… Richard A. Couto

I recently came across the CNBC Executive Leadership Awards.  The program has been in existence since 2004.  Awards are currently given to individuals in five categories:  Overall Executive Leadership, Leader in Innovation, Entrepreneurial Excellence, Green Leadership, and Lifetime Achievement. 

In my opinion, award programs like these tend to recognize individuals at the moment versus people who have sustained long-term leadership results.  Too often individuals like Dennis Kozlowski (former CEO of Tyco) have been showcased as the next great business leader, only to be added to the list of corporate scandals later. 

For a list of corporate executives who have been charged with crimes – click here.

Let’s hope this will be a good example of recognizing individuals for their organization’s overall excellence, not just for being the favor of the month.

- Michael McRee

I have suggested before that the closest I have come in recent years to a new form of leadership development was the Kennedy School’s Art and Practice of Leadership Development. Interestingly, I have been using some of these techniques in a Mgmt./Leadership Skills class and they have worked well.  However, I need more practice and simply sticking people in a “messy situation” is not enough.  We also need to give them the tools to get out! After all, that’s what leaders do (we hope).

So it seems that leadership is about knowing the information, theory, etc. and having the ability to observe self, group, context in real time and then intentionally choose a model of intervention.  Easier said than done.  What I have observed in the classroom is that some students know the information, but cannot “observe” some of the concepts when they occur in real time – right in front of their eyes.  Others know the information and upon reflection can observe what occurred, but have difficulty choosing a method of intervention to help the work of the group move forward.  Still others, intervene A LOT, but their interventions are not well thought through and often fail to help the group move forward. An environment that brings forth all of these dynamics in real time is a cool thing.  It is 2.0. – Scott J. Allen

The Leadership at the Movies page is one of my favorites here on the CLD site. When you watch a movie, examining its characters for leadership qualities is probably the last thing on your mind. Nonetheless, I invite you to take a look at some of the films listed here – most likely ones you have already seen – and watch them (again) while looking for the emergence of leadership styles on the screen. I’m almost certain you’ll take a liking to the idea of seeing leadership vividly play out before your eyes – a welcome change of pace from the thousands of articles and books describing it. Some experts even recommend the use of movies to promote leadership among employees in an organization. – Jim Meehan

When everything seems to be moving faster, maybe we just need to slow down to be better leaders.  During a recent web search, I came across a blog on Slow Leadership. 

The challenge for many of us is how do we take time…to take time.  And yet, we all know that when we do take time to slow down, we are able to put things in their proper perspective, focus on what is priority, and are often less stressed.

This blog seems to do a good job of looking at some of the more commonly overlooked, but still very important, issues.

- Michael McRee