Followership - Michelle Brask

This is a very well done and thought-provoking thesis. Brask has really done some excellent homework on the followership conversation. I particularly enjoyed her almost humorous section on followership definitions. Along with her, I find it stunning that even Kelley and Chaleff did not bother giving followership definitions in their initial studies. Brask's quote of Chaleff saying, "That's a sand trap" when asked for a definition at the Rethinking Followership conference is a real chuckle. It seems obvious Brask must have either attended the conference or seen the videos. I'm truly jealous!

One remarkable aspect of Brask's research is the breadth of it. I've been studying these followership themes since 1991 and I'd never heard of Berlie J. Fallon's 1974 book. I managed to find a used copy and order it. Brask's serious treatment of even this book is both thought-provoking and noteworthy.

Another comment stream I found interesting was driven by Ronald Lippett's pregnant thought, "Sometimes it seems hard to diagnose whether computers are leaders or followers." Fascinating thought! What is the role of technology in the leader/follower struggle? Another bunny trail to follow...

Brask's analysis of Joseph Rost's change of heart about the word "followership" was also fascinating. Apparently, Rost now believes the word followership is outdated, a vestigial and negative concept that must be entirely disregarded. His followership views have not changed over the years, but the language he uses to describe them have. Rost argues we are all just doing different forms of leadership...we are all more properly called "collaborators" of one sort or another. I personally think that's garbage thinking and semantic navel-gazing. We don't throw out a useful term just because people have a poor view of it. We defend and explain the term so people properly (and hopefully more positively!) understand it. We don't like the term "follower" or "followership," so now we're supposed to muddy up the word "leadership." NO! This is positively Orwellian thinking, Mr. Rost!

There are several interesting discussions of continuums of leadership and followership. Patsy Blackshear and Pete Townsend both propose interesting ideas that Brask ably summarizes. Again we have some new words invented such as "teamship." Oh brother! But Blackshear's work may be interesting - she summarizes four different streams of followership research. She will be reappearing in this blog stream! Blackshear's follower continuum is very thought-provoking.

Brask also highlights Angela Thody's work to organize followership terminology. This also sounds very interesting, but I couldn't find an online copy of the article. Bummer!

The final area of study for Brask's thesis was a lengthy conversation about toxic leadership and followership. She highlights Kellerman's stuff extensively. This is also thought-provoking as, in my haste to exalt the follower, I quite easily forget that there are crappy followers just as there are crappy leaders! While we do need to pay more attention to followers and followership, we must not forget original sin.

I found a tiny, spell-checker driven spelling error on page 65, first sentence of the third paragraph. Other than an utter triviality like that, this was outstanding and thorough research. Excellent work, Ms. Brask! This was a very helpful summary.