We’ve been warned not to drop the F-bomb. We’ve been told it’s a dirty word. When uttering it, we’re scolded for being rude, demeaning, or exercising poor taste.<\/p>\n
In her most recent work, Barbara Kellerman sets out to redeem the F-word by de-stigmatizing what it means to be led. In the past quarter-century, the F-word, "Follower," has been equated with mindless conformity or passive compliance. A follower has come to mean someone who lets another person think and decide on his or her behalf. In Followership<\/em>, Kellerman paints followers in a much different light by highlighting their latent power and their ability to effect change.<\/p>\n Her opening chapters attempt to reconcile why the field of leadership has been scrutinized from virtually every angle while the subject of followership has languished in obscurity. She concludes that the leader-centric approach has its roots in our historical context. Namely, America is a nation forged from revolution, and, as Americans, we have been suspicious of authority from our country’s birth. Kellerman also deduces that humans have a psychological inclination to focus on leaders due to an inbuilt need for order, structure, and hierarchy.<\/p>\n In the book’s midsection, Kellerman goes to great lengths to split followers into classifications based on their level of engagement. The bulk of the book is spent fleshing out a portrait of each follower type.<\/p>\n Bystanders<\/strong> – Onlookers in Nazi Germany who did not directly take part in the Holocaust, but did nothing to prevent it.<\/p>\n Participants<\/strong> – Merck employees who worked behind the scenes to gloss over the health hazards of medical drug, Vioxx.<\/p>\n Activists<\/strong> – A coalition of Catholic laity in Boston who held the church accountable for its cover-ups of sexual abuses by clergy.<\/p>\n Diehards<\/strong> – American soldiers, who put their lives on the line to aid wounded comrades during Operation Anaconda in the Afghan mountains.<\/p>\n In the chapters categorizing followers, Kellerman proves her merit as a storyteller. The real-world examples she draws are perfectly suited to frame her conception of followership.<\/p>\n Kellerman writes with a heavily academic style, rich in research and theory, and befitting her membership in Harvard’s faculty. If the book has criticisms, they are its length (263 small-print pages) and its abstraction. Kellerman devotes so much time to labeling styles of followership that she gives sparse treatment to the tangible ways followers can best interact with leaders.<\/p>\n Followership<\/em> shares similarities with books written on the subject of "leading up." Although Kellerman tries to distinguish "leading up" from following, the differences boil down to semantics. Primarily, the book explores the nature of exerting influence from the bottom upward.<\/p>\n From T-shirt slogans (Second place is the first loser) to advertising tag lines (Audi’s: Never Follow), we are taught to overlook anyone but the leader. Without diminishing the importance of leaders at the top, Kellerman points to the ever-increasing influence of those who don’t occupy positions of power and authority. The book successfully raises consciousness about followership, but it suffers from a lack of concreteness. The studious person may find Followership<\/em> fascinating, but the average reader will likely find the book too daunting and impractical to be of much benefit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past." ~ Edward Gibbon<\/p>\n "A man’s errors are his portals of discovery." ~ James Joyce<\/p>\n "You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it." ~ John Updike<\/p>\n "Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward." ~ Soren Kierkegaard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NR by Barbara Kellerman (Harvard Business Press, 2008) We’ve been warned not to drop the F-bomb. We’ve been told it’s a dirty word. When uttering it, we’re scolded for being rude, demeaning, or exercising poor taste. In her most recent work, Barbara Kellerman sets out to redeem the F-word by de-stigmatizing what it means to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Experience<\/h6>\n