A Celebration of Followership: The Story in Documents of Courageous Followership and the Followership Community

This unique retrospective, with over three hundred rarely seen documents, traces the impact of Ira Chaleff's ground breaking work that conceives of followership as the indispensable complement to leadership. Building on this record, it introduces the work of the community of followership educators and practitioners that has flourished in tandem with those initiatives. The narratives preceding each chronological segment place the documents in historic context. They suggest new veins of research for the upcoming generation of scholars drawn to this emerging field. The narratives inform, clarify, surprise, at times amuse and often inspire. The theorists, educators, trainers and coaches engaged with the subject of followership are a highly motivated group. They understand the power of the subject to change the way leadership is done, to support its virtues, curb its excesses and improve its outcomes. They also perceive that much of the world doesn't know about followership or sufficiently value it. There is truth in this statement. But it is not the entire truth. The purpose of this volume is to document the impressive variety of countries and institutions where courageous followership, and the other major followership models, have made their impact. Filling in this picture will bolster the commitment of the followership community to find better ways of developing dynamic and ethical followership in society, a manifestly crucial need in the face of leadership failures and transgressions. In that sense, this is a love letter to the followership community and an inscription on the baton Chaleff is passing to them.