Leadership, Now and Then - Followership by Dr Richard Claydon.

Does the popular idea that everybody is or can be a leader mean that we are losing the art of followership?

There have been numerous calls recently arguing that more research in followership and the better development of followers might help with the leadership crisis (I won’t go into the numbers, but they aren’t great).

How true is this?

That’s the question we will explore in this week’s DD.

As with previous DDs in this series, flow and separation are key themes. Ancient societies perceived followership in constant flow with leadership. Aristotle felt anybody suited to following would or could never be a leader. These different angles remain strong today.

To help us make sense of the complex divide, we will explore:

• Contemporary theories of followership that focus on flowing relationships and discrete roles/types
• Hobbes’ and Locke’s social contract theories of followership that examine how good followers should behave in conditions of poor leadership
• Rousseau’s model of good followership, in which choosing to follow paradoxically entangles with leadership practices forcing freedom

-----

Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.