Inside the Classroom: Followership Courses

[Music] Hey all, it's Lauren from the Leadership Educator Podcast. Welcome to season 10 where we're focusing on teaching practices and activities in leadership learning. We strive to be your source for knowledge and expertise in this space and feature episodes during the fall, spring, and occasionally during the summer. Make sure you don't miss an episode by hitting the subscribe button so you'll know when everything comes out. While you're there, make sure you leave us a five-star rating so others can find us. Happy listening and as Dan would say, be well. [Music] Hello and welcome to season 10 of the Leadership Educator Podcast. I am Lauren Bola, Assistant Professor of Instruction at Temple University. And I'm Dan Jekin, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Studies at the University of Southern Maine. So this season we're diving into some individual leadership and fallership courses. And our focus is on how leadership and fallership educators may teach those courses, sharing some of their own teaching approaches and insights from how they're approaching things in their places and spaces. So we're exploring both undergraduate and graduate courses from the US and abroad to better understand some of the learning activities and assessments that support our leadership. So while season we're going to approach these conversations, piggybacking on the integrated course design framework that Dr. D. Finke shared with us during his March 2022 episode, Creating Significant Learning Experiences. And he also wrote a book by the same name. And that process starts by identifying what we refer to as the situational or what the ILA guiding principles refers to as contextual factors. When we use all the information from those factors to informed decisions that we make about things like learning goals and feedback and assessment procedures and teaching and learning. Dan gave you a nice overview of what our season theme is. Today we're going to talk to Dr. Mark Renaker. My pronouncing that right. Mark Renaker and Mike Linville about their fallership studies division at Indiana Wesley and University. So first, Mark is the chair in the division of leadership and fallership studies and the executive director of the Center for the Advancement of fallership at Indiana Wesley and University. Mike is a professor in the division of leadership and fallership studies also at Indiana Wesley and University. Both will share their experience teaching fallership theories and frameworks in both undergraduate and graduate programs. What they've done for us is picked on undergraduate program, a graduate program and a little bit of a doctorate program. And they're going to talk to us about how they have woven fallership into those spaces. So Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you. Lauren, great to be here. Awesome. Mike, welcome as well. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Thank you for being here. We're excited to jump into this and trying to think of I think we definitely had Sharna Fabiano on to talk about faller's ship. We've had the Mark Hurwitz on this. Maybe only our third or fourth look at faller's ship. Think when we had Mark on it, it was he was on talking about the new directions issue that he co-authored with. You know what's her name? She's from the UK. Oh my god. People will skip it for now. I'll go back and put it in. I thought I had it. I thought I had it. So excited to have a conversation with y'all. But before we jump into talking about the two fallership forces that y'all have some responsibility either with teaching or help to design as part of what is a very unique division of leadership and fellowship studies. So can you y'all share a little bit of context about how you this very distinct division evolved to your institution? Yeah, thanks Dan. I'm going to have to give some acknowledgement to a people who went before me, even before Mike. We've had leadership programs since the early 2000s and there were two at that point in time, a master of arts and org leadership in our, what's now the PhD in organizational leadership. And so there were people that served in my chair role and in professor role, developed those programs who were on the forefront of thinking about having a faller ship as an emphasis. In fact, I read Chalif in his book Celebration of Faller's Ship Actually Sites. I think it's on page 183. I have that memorized for a some reason us being an early adopter. I was on site in the western this past summer and I actually talked to him about that because I was curious how did this start? And he had met with some of our faculty down at a Tobias Leadership Institute or conference and inapolis back in those days. They were already thinking about faller ship, but he had a chance to engage with them and they came back sort of inspired to make it a part of our program. So way back in the early 2000s, they were already creating faller ship as a part of our leadership thinking started a course. Mike came on board, I think in his faculty role, what probably around 2010, 2012 somewhere in that frame, I came to this role in 2017 and we just continued to build. We had that foundation and we started adding programs because we already already had a faller ship course. I think that facilitated, catalyzed a bit. A key moment for us was when we started to build a one of the build a bachelor's program, one to have a faller ship course to start looking for a textbook. Couldn't really find what we might have called a primer or an essentials or survey text. And so as you know, we wrote one that got some credibility inside the university. So not only did we have a faller ship course or courses and programs now we had a published text book and the Chancellor, Dr. Eileen home got behind us and my dean at the time, Dr. Terry Gunter got behind us and I had the radical idea we were doing a restructuring. So there was a good fortune. We just happened to be at a restructuring. And so we want to change the name. And so I floated out the idea of adding the name faller ship to the division, not really expecting that it would take, would be accepted, but it was. And so a little bit of fortuity, a little bit of good timing with the restructure. And then from there, because of that progression, the Chancellor said, why don't you start a center for the advancement of faller ship? So some of it comes on the heels, you know, as they say, the shoulders of people that went before us and they laid some foundation. We did some good things that in good timing, some fortuity took advantage of. And I think that was a key thing to recognize that here's an opportunity and took advantage of it. And so here we are trying to continue to find other ways, maybe to blaze the trail and hoping that because we've done it, other people will now have another reason or rationale argument for why they should do something similar. Yeah, fortuity was just the word that was coming to mind for me too. I haven't been a recovering department chair in a whole heart. It can be to change anything our current provost used to be chair of his history department. And he has a funny quote that he always shares, which is the only thing harder than changing history is trying to change a history curriculum. So at any time, we're trying to do anything like that. It's you're walking up hills, the kudos to y'all for that. And so the book want to make sure to share it with our audience. So essentials of faller ship, rethinking the leadership paradigm with purpose. And so a little birdie told me that y'all just released a second edition. Is that is that true? Yeah, second edition just came out hoping it's fully up on Amazon here shortly. But the first first edition was I'll say wildly successful. We didn't make the New York Times best settled list and not expect to for a textbook. But somewhere in the neighborhood about 35 institutions have started using it in a course or a part of a leadership course. And have sold several hundred hundred copies and probably approaching the thousand copy mark. And again, for faller ship textbook, we're taking out as a win and the publisher thought that was a win. And so we've produced a second edition and already trying to put in a good word where we think a third edition ought to come in two or three years to and keep the thing keep the thing going and become a sort of a trusted source, if you will. Whatever's happening in the field of faller ship will capture it, put it into that essentials framework. It's not the final word certainly in faller ship, but a good starter place for people to come to and get a good grounding in this growing discipline. I might just add a very quick story when Mark and I we actually had a conversation as soon call like, you know, with Irochela about this idea of a primer. He was certainly very very supportive of the idea. I happened to be contacted by a publisher around that same time. And so, Mark and I just began writing this, but we really didn't know, really had no idea how this might be received by the, you know, the community that would care about such a text. And so we sent out manuscripts to half a dozen of the faller ship seminal thinkers and asked them if they would kindly take a look and give us feedback. And we just kind of held our breath. And all of a sudden they started rolling in. And one after another after another said, this is, this is excellent. This is, I mean, I'm going to bore you with those, but those endorsments are in the book, but that, that was very gratifying. We felt like we had, we'd accomplished something. And so, well, it's, it's probably feels good knowing, like you knew in your gut that there was a need and to take action and actually get it done. And even putting a book together amidst everything, that you have to do anyway as a faculty member as a person in higher education. So tell us a little bit maybe more about you. You said you had the book for the class. Tell us a little bit more about the class broke the undergrad version and maybe the grad version. So like first, what's the actual title of the course? And then what are you hoping that your students get out of them? Well, Lauren, we got really, really creative with the title of both the undergraduate and graduate course, so drumroll someplace when you do your post-production on this. It's called "Followership." I know that might surprise you. We had to think along and hard about that. But both our undergraduate or master's level course are called "Followership." At the doctoral level, we don't have a specific course with that title, but we have a significant portion of an advanced leadership theory course as a "Followership" in that. So the text, Mike and I have talked about serves as a foundation for that. I mean, I think it would be a surprise that if we wrote a text, we want to use the text. What I might say at the high level is from lower degree to higher degree, we also then begin to incorporate other resources. So at the PhD level, they're going to be expected to read Barbara Kellerman's work and Iver Taylor's work and the Robert Kelley's work. And a lot of the articles around that, we're not expecting that at the undergraduate level. So that'd be one key difference, I think, is the depth of what we're asking them, the theory level that we're asking to get into, the amount of resources and the command they have of the "Followership" topic is going to increase as we go higher. Mike does a lot of the teaching, because I have more of administrative roles. I'll let him, I have some ideas, but I'll let him speak into some of those distinctions. Because he gets down the weeds in those. Well, interestingly enough, regardless of the level of this course, it seems to often evoke some of the same kinds of responses for students. Most of our programs are largely online because we're part of an adult education at our university. We do some residency with our PhD, but our undergrad and master's programs are fully online. That said, in the discussions that I have with students, again, regardless of level, very, very few of them have been exposed to what we would consider a proper understanding or definition of, what does "Followers" really mean? In fact, one of my favorite ways to approach this is to ask students, if this program were a degree in organizational "Followership," how many of you would be here? And nobody ever admits to or suggests that they would have been enrolled in such a program. We can talk a little bit more as we go on today about some of the specifics, but the takeaway is that once these courses are done, many, many students have light bulb moments, have epiphanies, and it's actually one of the most fun parts of the course is to help them understand that a follower is not a rank, it's a role. And we do, like, I'm gonna steal that in my class because I used to teach "Followership," like I didn't teach it at all, and then I taught it at the end. And then this year, I actually moved it up in my, I teach it at a 1,000 level, to entry level first year communication course called "Communicating Leadership," and I put it first because my students would come in and say, "I'm interested in leadership, but I'm not a leader." And, you know, me, "Ah-ha, we're all leaders. Let's talk about this." But I put "Followership" first, and then they realize there are moments when they are both, and then in talking more about other leadership concepts, they're more open to it because they know they can eat, they have these options. I have to put, say, two options, but they have either a leader or a follower, but they feel like they're situated somewhere, instead of being on the outside looking in, maybe, you know, once I had a fence looking in to the perceived leaders on the other side, it also gets them out of just thinking about, oh, I was present in high school, or I was at your, my school newspaper in high school, and it really gets them into thinking there, like you said, more roles than there are ranks, you know? I really like that. I'm gonna steal that. So when you see it, act natural, if you-- - I don't know whether you've had this experience law or an RU Dan, but it's been my observation over the years of teaching and leadership programs that really the majority, if not the vast majority of students come into those programs already, and at some level, still identifying as a leader or at least aspiring to be, and so, Bollership kind of really isn't part of their mental makeup. - Well, similar to what you said, Mike, I'm by the law, and you don't have to steal it, just slide it, we'll give it to you, take it, go. One of the questions that Mike asked, and I think this is particularly to the undergraduate class, but to his point, demographically age range, those stats, because we're adult education, that doesn't really matter whether associates, bachelor's, doctor, they kind of look the same, someone's just their career experience or their education on how many degrees they have, that seems to be the primary differentiator. We start many of the courses with a survey, just simple survey questions, in fact, in the bachelor's level course, the rest of the content is locked down until they complete the survey, and it's really just kind of where they at. Mike talked a little bit about that bias. I wouldn't join this program, it was a program on Bollership, and so we ask questions such as, are you a leader or a follower? Are leaders or followers more important in an organization? A series of this, but the one that comes to mind here is this idea of what did you think when you looked at this course list in this program and you saw a course on Bollership? What did you think? And the answers to that are reveal, I think, a lot. Even grappling with that question, you see some of the things that you just described Lauren about how putting it up front to begin to remap, something begins to happen when you get followership right, and this total picture of leadership and the system. And some of them, you can see them grappling with it, well, that makes sense because you can't be a leader without followers, so I guess you should have to. Some of them border on the hilarious, if not the scary saying something like, well, of course, you need to have a course where you tell people how to follow. So they're still seeing that from a very leadership side of the process. And I think Mike would agree with me, if there was only one thing we could do in a follow-up course or a module, if I had to settle on one thing, it would be this idea that we're talking about helping them understand that it's a role. As Mike said, there's this self-identity piece that people get trapped into, locked into, I think is more damaging perhaps in a follower role where people just, I'm just a follower. You know, I'm not that special, right? There's something that happens internally. They see the org chart and the hierarchy, and they're at the bottom, and that is it. So it's this rank, and not a very good one. They just, they've got to earn the paycheck. And if you can do some things that begin to make this shift from not just a rank, I mean, there still is a rank of hierarchy, but it's not just a rank, it's not a personality type. This is not you in an entirety. It is a role that you're playing. There's something that happens in that moment that we call the epiphany, the aha, that is this almost sudden figure ground reversal, remapping of their brain about leadership in its entirety. So if we go to the end of the course, we go to the end of our programs, often we'll do some sort of post-survey and say, "Now what course was most meaningful to you?" 90% of the time, they will point back to the followership course, and they will say, "That is the course that changed my entire thinking about how to lead." - Yep. - So they're talking about what we see. - And in the middle of that is this role, this thinking about a role. If you can get that, then it's like a set of dominoes begin to fall into place. - There's a story that we tell in book. It's a Mark's story to tell. Maybe he would be willing to share that. The day we signed the contract with the publisher, he and his wife went to a dinner theater. Would you maybe care to share that? - Yeah, it was a bit of irony. We signed the contract down in Minneapolis. There's a dinner theater. So we went down and this dinner theater, you first there's a buffet and you get up and you walk down. Both sides of this buffet, you get your food, walk back up to your seats, and after you eat, they move the food away, pull the stage out and do whatever. We've seen a lot of great shows. Something you'd see on Broadway, they'll do it here at this dinner theater. I'm letting my wife, she picks up her place, she's getting her food. And I go to pick up mine. Suddenly I hear four young ladies on the other side of the buffet having a conversation and sort of an argument about who's gonna go first. And one of them says, to the effect, I'm gonna go first, I'm the leader, you follow. And then that started this argument. Who me, I'm no follower, I'm a leader. You always did think you were better than that. Back and forth they go sort of sniping at each other. And I'm just standing there. We just signed this contract to write a book on followership. And I'm holding this empty plate with sort of a blank look on my face just listing until I look up my wall. about 30 feet away down the buffet and she's motion-forming a follow. Maybe I should, I don't think I put that in the book, but I needed to get down there. But it just was this irony that we talked about. There you have it, right? These preconceived ideas, this negativity, this dysfunction, pick your word there, that people just innately feel about this idea of being a follower that gets sort of scripted into us and our students come in with that. We at the academic level, whatever professor, assistant professor, administrator, if we've been around leadership, been around followership, we think differently about it, mostly, not all do. I don't think industry has caught up yet, right? There's still this do leadership thing and you have to explain followership. But even though we are more accepting of it, perhaps academically, students coming into the act, haven't caught up yet. And that's what that's what we experience. They still have that same visceral reaction as those four young ladies did on the other side that this is a bad thing. And so there's a roll shift that if we can get them into it, another quick, I won't go to the entirety, but one of the things we do in workshops and happens in classes, we'll just go through my day, you know, and Mike could go through his, you could go through yours, right? I walked in the morning as division chair, I meet with my administrative assistant and that moment I'm leading, you know, she's following, then I walk down to the Dean's office. Now he's leading and I'm following, except he asked a question perhaps and from my expertise and I provide that. So for a moment, that conversation, now I'm leading he's following Mike, you know, he's I'm his direct supervisor, except maybe he's chair in a dissertation, I'm on the committee. So now he's leading and I'm following back and forth, I can map my day and the lower you are, perhaps an organizational hierarchy, maybe the less movement, the higher, maybe the less movement, you stay a little more fixated in a role, but you get into a middle management position. My observation is it is a whiplash. You were back and forth in single conversations and that sort of exercise with students is another way or or anyone is another way to bring to the forefront. You're not either or you're both and and the more we embrace that and become comfortable in those shifts, the more effective we'd become together. You know, you make two really good points in that. The first part is being in that buffet line. Like it made me think what am I learning outcomes is like, you know, recognize leadership in everyday life. I wouldn't have suggested the buffet line, but to your point wherever you are, there are those opportunities. But then the second part, you know, leading into it is you're there's not this static either. I'm always a leader. I'm always a follower. Like I try to give like like a life explanations. I tell my students, you know, in here in the classroom, I'm the leader. But then I also like was in a doctoral program and I'm following my faculty member and in that moment and you my students, you don't know looking at me, you know, how many of these roles I hold. But like saying it like that is like one of those light bulb moments. I'll talk about like those lally pop moments. Like they then get to see like, okay, so it's okay if I'm going back and forth and I'm now prepared for when I'm back and forth in my own own space. So I know Dan, I'm sure you got a bunch to say because Dan loves fellowship and he's been so quiet today. Okay, no, no, no, this is some like you're about to jump in. But I, okay, I was just gonna have one quick comment. You know, it starts really, really early. And one of the analogies we use is how many of us have been to a family get together around the holidays and somebody's little type runs into the room and how many of us have heard, you know, there goes there goes little Suzy. She's a natural born follower. If nobody says that, no. So it starts those those dispositions and those perceptions start very, very early. Absolutely. Yeah, I've got. I think I've got like a half dozen things I want to comment on about what what y'all just just shared. And so I, I guess I'll preface this by I know that some Mike and Mark, I know that I share with you that we we all graduated from Irish a lot of crates is following, we're trading the trainer program. And you had me thinking about that the leader follower organizational chart. And I love that slide. That's probably and I'm so gracious that he shared that with all the folks that graduated from that program. And it's basically for our folks that are, you know, for listeners, it's basically like any, you know, organizational flow chart that you might see. But at every single level of that hierarchy of the flow chart, every single position says leader slash follower. And it gets right to your, you know, to Mark's point of right, like I might be, you know, the chair in this meeting, but in the next meeting like other people have certain expertise or certain authority or decision making, you know, responsibilities or what have you. And we're interchanging back and forth between those roles over and over and over again on our day to day. And, you know, we we tried to come up with some terminology around that. And by way, I'm speaking of Salori through Pooz and instructor over Christopher Newport University. We presented a paper at the Global Follower Ship Conference last year, where we called it role-ling, like role-dash-ing because we introduced followership texts, both courageous follower. And then I know Laura uses the Herwitz's leadership as half the story text. And we've been using that in our collegial leadership competition courses. And we found from interviewing some of these students. And we shared this at the conference last year that students felt more comfortable moving between those roles because of the followership literature that they've been exposed to, you know, the case studies and the opportunity to discuss some of that and reflect on some of that in the coursework. And one of the other interesting things about that about that that course or that experiences students rotate whether they're like the leader or the quote unquote follower or team member when we're practicing different team-based activities. So you know, Laura might be the leader in Activity One and then you know, an activity to Mike takes on the role again, air quotes leader, right? And so because they've had practice students in being in either of those roles, it kind of accentuates some of those, some of their learning around what it means to be in those different roles. And they say things like, oh, you know what? I'm going to speak up a little bit more or I'm going to, you know, I realize that I should speak a little bit less, you know, because, you know, again, just using like voices and example around some of the ways that they might behave, you know, going forward when presented with a similar situation. Another thing that you all said that really had me, you know, kind of perk up a little bit. So this idea around, you know, Mike, you were saying like, you know, little Susie's natural born, you know, follower. Like when Angela Spranger and I wrote an article on, on like, followership and post-secondary education, that was Mark Kerwoods and Rachel Thompson did new directions. It's been, it's been a few years. I think it was new directions 167 on followership education. We were looking at some of the key differences that we found in the literature, which are what much at that time between leadership and followership education. One of the big ones was that students come in with a lot less requisite knowledge around followership than they, right? I mean, you've asked a bunch of people, I mean, any late, anybody in, you can go in any room, you know, anywhere, probably on the globe and say, Hey, who's heard a leadership, right? You're going to get a lot of hands go up. Who's heard of followership? You're not going to get as many hands that go up. I think that's evolving, but we're not quite there yet. And the other thing that you said that kind of is associated with that as we were kind of looking at like what were some of these key factors or key differences, the language. As you said, you know, Mark of the folks getting into it at the dinner theater, right? Like followership and follower and the English language has such a negative connotation. I think we're getting better at that. But, you know, that classic activity of like, well, what's a different word for follower, right? Team members, supporter partner, you know, having that conversation early on, I think can be really, really helpful as we're, you know, bringing students into what is followership, why does it matter? How does that evolve, you know, as a part of your identity? And, you know, I guess as I think about that, I might, I say all that because it leads me to a question of like what, what would you say is maybe the evolution of like students' goals when they start the course? And then how does that change as they get into the middle or towards the end of the course? Well, let's go back to something that you mentioned, Dan, because the way to start, at least my, my response to this. And that would be, you mentioned that students come into programs without any real depth of knowledge about followership. So when we think of leaders and leadership, we associate certain competencies or, I mean, if nothing else, responsibility, you know, they've got the weight of whatever on their shoulders. That's not necessarily true in the minds of most students when it comes to followers. And so the idea of leading students through a process that ultimately what they find in our courses is pretty close to almost all. Let me put it that of the competencies that we want to see in an effective leader. We also want to see an effective follower. Even if it means responsibility, you know, some followers like to be followers because they don't want to accept the responsibility for other success or the organization success or there could be a thousand reasons. But an effective follower, as we all know, is willing to assume responsibility, is willing to speak up when things aren't right. And so the courses that we teach particularly in the bachelors and the masters take our students through a process where they start by just simply learning it's a role, not a rank. And by the time they get to the end of it, they start to see that it's not That's certainly all that different in terms of what they need to develop to be a part of an effective organization. What are the early slides that both in classes or elsewhere? There's these North House as a set of when he looks at the different leadership theory of trait behavioral. Says, "Here's when we, the composite leaders, they have determination, they have intelligence, they have integrity." And so you'll put that on the slide and say, "Here that is. These are the characteristics of leaders. One question for you. Which one of these do you not want your followers to have? Do you not want them to have integrity? Do you not want them to be intelligent? Do you not want them to have driver determination? You know, the same characteristics that we see effective leaders have an analog, have a corollary, and be an effective follower. So that's this progression, I think, Lauren. If you start with this role that we talked about earlier, now that aha moment is, if I'm both, then do I have to shift my characteristics? Do I have to shift who I am that know? You just have to figure out how to use who you are appropriate for the role that you're assuming at a moment. You know, what does it mean to be intelligent? What does it mean to have integrity? What does it mean to exercise constructive challenge? What does it mean to exercise support? And this role as a leader versus as a follower. So when we get to the end of the course and we ask students sometimes to go back, look at your early survey questions. Because we, Dan, you mentioned some of those other terms or synonyms that we sometimes populate. That's one of those early survey questions too. Come up with synonyms. There's a few nicer ones. You know, the team teamwork comes out sometimes or companion, but there's plenty of minions, lackeys. You know, there's, there's a high proportion of it early on this that way. What happens in this shift is how they get to the end. They look back and say, wow, it's wrong. You know, that's not what it is. The followers are just as important, if not more important than leaders in some way. There's also this, and I think followership or focus on that has a capacity, at least where we're at, in the development stream, to do something maybe leadership doesn't quite have the capacity to do at this moment with its focus on almost super hero. Qualities and myth, followership, this focus on it seems to have this way of bringing out the common humaneness, humanity, equality a little bit. It's not denigrating leaders, but it's elevating everybody else. It's not pulling something down. It's lifting, and there seems to be this rise in the, in our students thinking about who they are, about who others are. The honor, you know, it is an honorable role to be in a follower role because well, every organization needs them. In fact, most people spend more time in the follower role than leadership role. But when they are leading, those insights now shape how they think about those who are in the following role, right? They become a bit more compassionate. They think more about what do my followers need? Because now I understand the other side of the equation a little bit. So, something leadership studying development is not good, can't do that. But I think this current focus on followership has this ability to do something and move us a little forward, a little faster in this larger picture. We have this opportunity. It changes the way people think about themselves and each other in a very healthy way. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges in all of this is the extent to which hierarchies are based in our integrated and sort of shape our, our various organizations and institutions going all the way back even, you know, we can go back to Viber and Bureau of Bureau of Craticism. Sorry. Yeah, concept of bureaucracy. We can look at the Industrial Revolution and how systematizing things was very deep personalizing to people. And to some extent, I think that's really carried through even to the day. And I'll speak for the Baby Boomer generation since I'm part of it. I think we, in particular, the Baby Boomers have acquiesced to that hierarchy and sort of resigned themselves to just doing what they're told and doing it when they're told to do it. My hope is that these younger generations, and I really see this in some of our students, I don't think they're going to stand for that. I think they are the hope we have to really make a change in how organizations function because nowadays, you know, the younger generations, if they don't have a voice, if their perspectives aren't being heard, if they don't have the opportunity to grow and develop. They're, they have no problem walking out the door and going to another organization that will value them. So I think this is a generational change. I don't think we're going to see it happen overnight. We haven't so far. And Ira has been at this for a hot time as we all know. But I do think that it's coming, but it may take some time. I agree so much with what you both said, like to your point about the hierarchies, they're not the young people's realities. Like they know the top and they know the bottom, but not in the top. They may not even know who exactly is in charge, but they'll give somebody some responsibilities just so they can go and take it away. And you know, I first noticed or was clued into this. We had a former US president come speak on our campus. And he said that young people save us from we're at our worst. And he walked through probably the last three or four major crises in US history and then gave examples of how young people protested or young people wrote letters or young people voted and did all of these things. To then shift it shift our nation back to a better place. And so to your point, like I always tell them, I tell them to their face, y'all can't change your oil, but you can change the world. Because they don't even like think twice about, you know, challenging a system. And we're sitting here kind of giving them these tools to go in and do these things. And so like part of me, I feel like, I feel like my purpose is really in leadership education because they need to make it better for my kids. And so giving them these tools so they can advocate for what they want feels good because they're going in and they're changing people's minds in a way that I don't that I feel like is continuous and we've seen it before. And it's just continuing. But but I do want to get into something and Mike, you you start to talk a little bit about it. But for those who may not know, can you tell a little bit more about the followership competencies? But then what like a specific assignment or activity do you do to teach some of those concepts? The the activities do vary. They differ from program to program. A couple of things that we do in the bachelor's program that have been very well received. And it's not we don't do this just for followership. We do this in most of the courses in that entire program. But we specifically do this, which is a the students are required to interview a leader or a follower who's in some sort of professional position and go get perspectives, you know, from someone that will either reinforce what they're learning. I'll give them some new and fresh perspectives. So they have an assignment called a leader to leader interview. But of course, we use it for followers in that course. Another activity that they do in the second week of the the followership course that seems to be really impactful is they're required to chart a leadership system for their organization. It's in a sense they may have an organizational chart that's very hierarchical. But how does there are they're required to figure out how does the organization really? And I've actually had students write that this was like the single. There's favorite assignment of the entire program because and it's amazing what you can learn when you view students responses to that kind of an assignment. What does it really look like at your organization? How do things connect? How do they work? I remember one in particular where the student drew like a molecule and he had all these different pieces of the organization that we're floating around and overlapped in some cases. Some of the world like a bin diagram others weren't others you're kind of floating out in space. But really fascinating activity that students didn't seem to really resonate with students as for competencies as we mentioned earlier those are largely. But in similar fashion to what we would teach for leader competency. The the challenge I think for most students is it doesn't take them very long to get to the point where. They start to realize that this whole courageous followership stuff that Ira's so well known for is not easy. And so we we get into a lot of how do you do that? And that we actually enjoy diving into this a little bit more even in our PhD course. But we talk about in more depth about things like implicit follower theory and how much I how little I think we as a discipline have really. Take them to deep dive into that because ultimately we're going to have to grapple with things like trust and power you know trust is kind of at the top of my list for leader and follower competencies. But right behind trust or actually integrated into the whole trust thing is power and I tell students routinely regardless of how benevolent or serving or wonderful and effective leader may be. The follower never can never ever forget who writes who signs the page and that dynamic because followers have families to feed. And we can't ever forget that that power dynamic. And that makes it hard sometimes to speak up when when the situation may work. And I thank you. It's something interesting in our conversation, Laura. And the trajectory of our conversation in many ways echoes the trajectory of content or content development in our courses. So we focus start with this role because if we don't get that done, I'm not sure what else we're going to do. We're just going to somehow, even if inadvertently reinforce certain implicit theories, certain self-identities, certain rank base. If we can get the role piece done, that's the big aha moment. And once we start doing the shifting back and forth, now we're okay, leader characteristics and follower characteristics in some ways are the same because I'm still the same person. That can get us into this thinking about a whole leadership system, leader follower, leadership, followership, context, purpose, common values. So we're continuing to build. Then I think it's at this point and Mike is moving this direction where we've got some typologies, whether it's Barber's, Kalamaz engagement, typology, Robert Kelley's on independent critical thinking and active participation or Iris is a favorite one on the courageous follower we have our own five components of effectiveness that draw us from across those. So that's part of the competency, I would say Lauren, as we get down into the typologies, what does that look like? So a couple of things, we, particularly the undergraduate, they might do it in the masters as well. You can correct me if I'm wrong there Mike, but we send them out to the publisher site and have them complete Iris, courageous follower instrument. What's interesting is they almost all come back as partner. So it's not the instrument itself that really creates the inside. It's the discussion about, are you sure you're all partners? So now we can dive down into those qualities of courage, those qualities of constructive challenges, those qualities of support. Now, what does that really look like? Are you really doing this or are you really doing that? So it opens up a doorway to dig deeply into that. And then I think there's an assignment as well, particularly in the batches level course. Ira has, what we might call a bit of a case study at one place and the scenarios like this. Imagine you and your boss go into a meeting that includes your boss's boss and other people. And your boss gives factually incorrect information to his boss who's about to act on it and no one's correct in it. What do you do? Do you publicly correct your boss in front of his boss who he really wants to be in favor with? It's a scenario like that is a way to at least begin to talk about what does it look like to constructively challenge well? What are the, what's the, there's wrong ways to do that. How do I do that with a good decorum? What does it mean to support? So putting together some real life scenarios, having students give some examples. When were you in a situation where you should have challenged and you didn't? When were you in a situation when you could have supported your leader even that wasn't more popped? And all those things that Ira talks about or others talk about trying to have them delve into their member banks of when they did or when they didn't to try to establish, okay, when you did this well, just keep doing this. When you didn't do it, now you know what to fix and sort of use the past to sort of fix some of those competencies good or bad for what they do in the future. So our very conversation in many ways has followed the trajectory of what we would think a good followership course does those high moments of learning at all, and a natural progression. Just imagine you get a student to that point. It's a role shifting back and forth. I'm both same qualities, part of a system. And these are the characteristics qualities, the typologies. You do that in six weeks, eight weeks, fifteen weeks. I think, I think you've done okay. You know, well, and there's one other thing in the graduate programs that we, that we highlight and in the PhD in particular, we get a chance to talk about. And that is, while the focus is on looking at followership through the lens of the individual who is the follower and what the competencies might be that they need to develop, it's very critical that they understand that leaders need to understand followership accurately. So whether we're talking about, you know, McGrider's XY theory, you know, the leader needs to understand that, you know, so many other topics that feed into this, whether it's in the Edmonds and psychological safety, or, you know, we can go a lot of directions with this. But the point is, a lot of followers would be better followers if their leaders were better leaders. And so what are the responsibilities of leaders to facilitate and develop effective followers? So that's a better answer to the question a few times, Mike, in this way. Why do we write a book or who do we write a book on followership for? And my first answer is for leaders, because if we believe that followers are not just passive, they are active or proactive in the way that's out there in the literature, leaders have a lot of potential to either create or thwart that context and make it easier or harder. So if leaders, if a leader does not think a follower is supposed to speak up or challenge them, it's going to be a lot harder for a follower to do that. In contrast, if a leader accepts that, and I would say, expect it, that's a completely different context. And, you know, one that a leader has to have some humility, not an oversized ego, to allow people to speak the truth in that way. So there is, I think that's part of why this, a followership course, at least in part, is so powerful as it relates to leadership as a whole. It's in the followership study that that really, really becomes clear that when you're leading, this is what's needed. This is what you have to do. It's not just about inspiring people, it's not just their passive recipients of your inspiration, motivation. They are active members that you need to create the space and allow to do what they are capable of doing, because never forget, you're also a follower. You know, I am one. So you create the cypher scenario that I want other people to create for me as a powerful. One more activity, I think, that comes to mind, because the capstone project, of course project, having students create their own followership training. You know, an hour long, you know, what does that look like in terms of outline form, resources, and so forth to do. We all know, or have heard, the best way to learn something is to teach it. So by the end of the course, we flip it around. So now you go teach followership. And it's just a way to cement all those insights, put them on the other other side of things. You know, Mark, you know, this, Mark, you might just felt like a master class of followership. Like I probably am the only one that's not courageous followership trained in this space. But it felt like you, too, have laid out, you know, the steps to, you know, that you can walk your students through or even people that you're working with, you're training, walk them through and, and not just give them the good and fluffy stuff, but like give them the things that are meaningful and the tools that will help them, whether they are in a leader role or a follower role. And so we could probably talk on, and probably for another hour, but we are right at time. We want to say, Dan and I are so grateful for having you all today. We appreciate all your perspectives and the things you've shared. I usually like to take a couple of notes, but I feel like now I want to jump in and figure out how we can have a part two of followership because there are so many things I feel like y'all could still share with us that we didn't even touch on. Thank you all so much for joining us. I'm good luck teaching, leading and following the rest of the semester. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Dan. This has been a privilege. Enjoy it. Oh, appreciate it. [music] You connect with leadership educators virtually. Please follow us on social media. Watch the Leadership Educator podcast on LinkedIn to find our page. And find us on Twitter @leadeducatorpod for episode release information, show notes and upcoming events. You can connect with me on Twitter @doctor_leadership. And Lauren is at MRSLAURJB. That's Miss Laura JB. You can find the episodes wherever podcasts are available. We also encourage you to please subscribe at leadershipeducator.com and rate us five stars as the more you rate us, easier it is for others to find us. We'd like to thank the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Journalism, Innovation, Management and Leadership within the great college of journalism and mass communication at the University of Georgia. The support was facilitated by Dr. Keith Herndon, William S. Morris Chair in New Strategy and Management. And our wonderful theme music was composed, performed and mixed by Dr. Matt White, Trumpeter, Imposer and Associate Professor and Chair of Jazz Studies at the University of South Carolina. Check them out at mattwhitejazz.com. Matt, thank you so much for sharing your musical genius with our audience. And finally, we are grateful for the support of two professional associations that are destinations for leadership educators, the Association of Leadership Educators and the International Leadership Association. 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