Leadership and Followership.

Catalog description

This is a senior level course on Followership and Leadership with the purpose to educate students on the importance of the dynamic relationships between leadership and followership. This course requires an intense reading and research agenda. Followership is critical to each individual's leadership development. The course is designed to correct the over-emphasis on leaders and misguided and even mistaken under-emphasis on followers - in the workplace and in the society at large. The general subject has two primary purposes: One is theoretical - to provide students of leadership and now followership with a new and different lens through which to view the leader-follower relationship. The other is practical - for in real life we are followers much more often than we are leaders. This does not mean that we are without power and/or influence. Therefore, the following questions will be addresses of how subordinates can and should relate to their superiors: Who exactly is a follower? Why do we follow? How do leaders and followers relate? What are the differences among followers? What do leaders need to know about followers? Adn what are the distinctions between good and bad followers? The presumption is that in order to understand leadership, we need take into account not only those who exercise power, authority, and influence; but also those on whom power, authority, and influence are being exercised. There is another presumption as well: that to instruct on good followership is as important to the common good as it is to instruct on good leadership (Kellerman, 2008).