Followership

Centuries of interest in leadership has revealed that we have been much more interested in leaders than in followers. Indeed, academics and non-academics alike have focused almost exclusively on discovering and explaining the qualities and behaviors of leaders, with very little attention given to those of followers. Much more often than not, followers have been described, implicitly or explicitly, as passive recipients of leaders’ influence. To date, there has been very little recognition of how followers influence leaders. This is surprising given considerable agreement among leadership scholars that leadership is a process involving interactions between leaders and followers. In actuality, leadership cannot exist without some type of followership. How can people lead if no one follows them? Highlighting this truism is Peter F. Drucker’s definition ...