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Thoughts on Followership
OBEDIENCE | For the sake of conversation, I share this concept of followership as obedience or submission. This captures both the leadership and the followership of Jesus. Jesus said that the core of his mission was “to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34, NIV). In his priestly prayer, Jesus acknowledged…
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Who (Really) Are Followers?
Who and what are followers and how are they really different from leaders? Successful leaders and successful followers share the same basic characteristics: visionary, decisive, communicative, energetic, committed, and responsible. Effective followers possess integrity, have a sense of ownership in the organization, demonstrate versatility and flexibility, and take responsibility for their own involvement1 . However, aren’t…
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Complexity & Leadership
A complex group can be understood as a web of interactions between group members, outside contextual dynamics, and the parameters of the group as its own system. For leadership research, this provides three vantage points of study: member/member interactions, group-as-system/context interactions, and member/context interactions. Complexity suggests that any individual part of a system (a person,…
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Finishing Well
I have previously done some work in my graduate program on the topic of how leaders “finish well.” Finishing well describes how leaders prepare for and engage life after their transition into retirement. Bob Buford, in Finishing Well, calls this stage Life II and observes that finding significance and meaning in Life II is often difficult for leaders, especially…
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Prospectors & Defenders
Miles & Snow describe four basic archetypes – overarching categories – of how organizations tend to function. Defenders value stability and tradition. Their market focus is narrow and deep, surviving through price or product quality. Structure is formal with centralized control. They are avoiders of change. Prospectors are at the opposite end of the spectrum. They…
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Leadership: No Such Thing?
What is Leadership? I resonate with Richard Barker’s argument that leadership still isn’t really a construct. Leadership studies are all over the map and almost every scholar you read has a different definition, many of which are contradictory. It seems often that almost anything can be leadership to the point that everything is leadership, which…
