Healthy Followers: SpiritBuilt Leadership 11

This is a book about followers - healthy ones. Healthy followers think and act. Followers are often ignored when organizational successes or failures are explained. This is because: • Leaders are more visible than followers. • Considerably more study has been done on leadership than on “followership.” • We suffer from significant misconceptions about the power of followers. Too often we look upon followers as fairly benign participants in the organization who remain passive until they receive instructions from their leader and then proceed, dutifully and unquestioningly, to follow those instructions. As a result we do not sufficient appreciate the contribution that effective followers actually do make to organizational success. To be effective themselves, leaders must have effective followers! This book examines the often-neglected subject of healthy followers.