Review of Followership by Barbara Kellerman

           Kellerman rightly opened her book by noting that there is very little study done on followers. In the global urban human psyche the word “follower” has a strong negative connotation. Maybe it is because the “hero” in every silver screen is a leader who somehow stands head and shoulder over the rest, balancing power and authority with concern and integrity. Or maybe it is because those who lack formal power and authority feel second-rate be it a nation under colonial rule or students in an eighth grade class room or prisoners locked in a six by four feet room.

Kellerman shattered this myth, this uneasiness that floats around the idea of followership and reminded every executive that the follower is as important as a leader. She further stressed the importance of a follower to follow well, especially towards the end of her book where she wrote what it means to be a good or bad follower.

On a single-axis, Kellerman identified five types of followers and used different taxonomy for each type. Therefore citizens of a nation were examined in her case study of Bystanders, knowledge workers of a large corporation were studied for Participants, the Catholic Church was studied to understand Activists and a government wing, the military, was used to explain Diehards. In doing so Kellerman covered a broad spectrum of followers, but unfortunately in each of these case studies the nature of followership is different. Kellerman leaves it to the reader to amalgamate the different situational followership into their daily ethos, be it in the workplace or in exercising their civic rights. This approach, on the one hand does not give the reader a clear direction for a particular role, say a follower in the workplace. On the other hand it throws open the door for wider research in an area that has been least studied but where most of the masses reside.

Earlier in her book, Kellerman briefly mentioned Chaleff’s and Kelley’s dual-axis typology of followers. Unfortunately, she herself set forth a single scale five point classification of followers. Therefore while Kellerman examined what each type of followers do, she did not look into how followers can change from Isolates or Bystanders into dynamic Participants, Activists, or Diehards. In the case study on Participants, following the role played by the knowledge workers at Merck, Kellerman’s simplistic suggestion was for the leader to “closely monitor” the follower. Most workers, particularly knowledge workers, thrive on freedom. How to motivate and engage workers, citizens, or other nomenclatures of people needs further research.

Kellerman’s book however, jolts a reader awake, particularly in election years. The importance of exercising the civic rights of citizenship gets magnified in a reader's conscience after learning about Bystanders who did nothing during Hitler’s reign and allowed terror and destruction to prevail. It also clearly shows the power and influence that every worker or citizen have within their reach. As she noted this opportunity for participation by followers is only growing because of the speed and ease of communication. The question is will these advances in science be used wisely, creating good followers, or will its use be left unknown and unused, creating bad followers? In provoking these questions, Kellerman has flung open the doors to a plethora of research opportunities that will truly impact leader-led relationships in the days ahead.