Power of Followership, The

by Robert E. Kelley

Never has the cult of leadership held such sway in business as it does today -but it's The Followers who really get things done.  A provocative guide to the vital new organizational style that puts the power back where it belongs.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction

260 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 1992

Reviews

[Louise Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in the 1990s, this book still stands the test of time. Followers are an important component of organizations. Understanding them as well as their relationship with leaders results in a better organization.

[Alexander Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book is from the 1980s, it is still very much relevent to today's society of leaders and followers. I am currently getting my doctoral in education and I am basing my dissertation theorticial frame on Mr. Kelley's framework.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best chapters were first and last. Get the interesting idea and the summarized application and skip the rest.

[Allen Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon seeing "leader" all over the cover and title page, I was dismayed as I thought I was getting into yet another book about followership that was really aimed at leaders. Pleasantly, I found Kelley's tone and message to be very helpful to followers like me.

While Kelley's model of followership types has often been duplicated in other books and articles, his most important contribution to me was detailing the 7 paths to followership: why people choose to engage in subordinate roles. From self-expression to self-transformation, and from personal goals to relationship, this paradigm is really useful for debunking the common myth that everyone is (and/or should be) aspiring to leadership and that followership is merely a training ground (or worse, a purgatory) before that reward can be obtained. Sadly, this truth seems to have been surprisingly overlooked in more recent books on followership.

This book is very readable, without getting bogged down in lots of statistics or extended case studies, and yet including enough of each to make relevant points. For anyone interested in followership, it is absolutely worth tracking down a copy of this foundational book.

[Carol Mann Agency]

From the Publisher

Never has the cult of leadership held such sway in business as it does today -but it's The Followers who really get things done. A provocative guide to the vital new organizational style that puts the power back where it belongs.