KELLERMAN, BARBARA  COURSE ON FOLLOWERSHIP (COURSE DESCRIPTION AND SYLLABUS, TWO MODULES)

 

PART ONE

 

HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL

Harvard University

 

PAL 153m - FOLLOWERSHIP

Spring 2008

 

 

Faculty: Professor Barbara Kellerman

 

Office Location: Taubman, First Floor

Phone: (617) 495-7570

Email: barbara_kellerman@harvard.edu

Office Hours: By appointment. To arrange, contact instructor.

 

 

 

Faculty Assistant: Jody Sharpe

Office Location: Taubman, First Floor

Phone: 496-8866

Email: jody_sharpe@harvard.edu

 

Schedule of Classes: Tuesdays and Thursdays - 11:40 to 1:00pm

Classroom: RG-20

Class Dates: Thursday, January 31 through Thursday, March 13

 

 

 

 

Course Description:

 

Young Alexander conquered India.

He alone?

Ceasar beat the Gauls.

Was there not even a cook in his army?

 

 Philip of Spain wept as his fleet

 Was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?        

 

 Excerpt  from "A Worker Reads History,"  by Bertolt  Brecht    

 

 

 

As the above lines from Brecht pointedly and even poignantly suggest, there is no leadership without followership - no leader without at least a single follower. Yet during the last quarter century, during which the "leadership industry" grew exponentially, we have been fixated on leaders and ignored followers nearly completely.

 

Why is this? Is our obsession with leaders and neglect of followers rational? Is it grounded in an intellectually rigorous analysis of what transpires when change is created – or for that matter when stasis is sustained? Is it logical in light of our own experience of how people in groups and organizations really behave? Or are there other, more elusive, reasons for this ostensibly benign neglect?

 

 This course on Followership is designed, deliberately, as a corrective. It is designed to correct for our over-emphasis on leaders and for our misguided and even mistaken under-emphasis on followers – in the workplace and in the society at large. 

This first of two successive spring 2008 modules on 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. As it turns out, though, this does not mean that we are without power and/or influence. Therefore to get at the question of how subordinates can and should relate to their superiors it is important to address, as we will, questions such as these: 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? And what are the distinctions between good and bad followers?

 

In this module titled Followership, and in the next titled Followers, the presumption is that 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. For the trajectory of human history testifies that learning leadership without learning followership is doing only half the work. 

 

 

Course Requirements:

 

 

•    On Tuesday, February 26th a 4 to 6 page paper will be due that addresses a clear and concentrated question prompted by the class readings, discussions, or films.

•    On Thursday March 13th an 8-12 page paper will be due that is a case study of followership. The case study should include a clear description of the context, and of the leader. However the focus should be on followers, on subordinates with less power, authority, and influence than their superiors. The case should be relatively contemporaneous, that is, based on a dynamic or an event that took place within approximately the last five years. Six students will be exempt from writing the final 8 to 12 page paper. Instead they will write a 3 to 4 page executive summary and present their case studies to the class in a format designed for oral rather than written delivery. These six presentations will each take approximately 20 minutes, including questions and comments from the class. Students who are interested in presenting their cases to the class should submit to the instructor and course assistant a brief statement that outlines the proposed presentation by February 21st. Selections will be based on originality, diversity, and clear connection to the themes of the course. 

•    Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions. Therefore, attendance in class should be considered mandatory.

 

 

 

Evaluation and Grading:

 

Students will be evaluated on the basis of:

 

1)    the vigor and rigor of their oral participation

 

2)    the creativity and competence of their papers

 

Grades will be determined in rough accord with the following percentages:

 

Participation:     50 %

 

        Papers:     50 %

 

 

Added Notes:

 

•    This module may be taken in conjunction with Followers (PAL 156m - offered during the fourth quarter); or it may be taken independently of it.

•    The use of personal computers is prohibited during class.

 

 

                                                                         Continued….

 

•    In the event you must leave class early, please inform the course assistant beforehand.

•    If you must miss more than one class, please explain your situation to the course assistant.

•    This syllabus should be considered final. However this does not preclude small adjustments at later points. 

 

 

 

Required Readings:

 

•    Course Reading Packets can be purchased at the HKS Course Materials Office (Belfer, G-6).                                                                  

 

 

•    The following book is available for purchase at the Harvard COOP:

 

o    Barbara Kellerman, Followership: How Followers Create Change and Change Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, 2008)

 

 

•    All readings are also on reserve in the Kennedy School Library.  

 

 

 

*************************************************************************

 

 

SYLLABUS

 

 

 

THURSDAY, JANUARY 31:   WHY “FOLLOWERSHIP?” 

 

Barbara Kellerman, Followership: How Followers Create Change and Change Leaders, (Harvard Business School Press, 2008), xv-xxi, 3-23.

Robert E. Kelley, The Power of Followership: How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and Followers Who Lead Themselves (Doubleday, 1992), 11-32.

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 1-16.

 

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5:  WHY WE FOLLOW

 

Kellerman, Followership, 41-74.

Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape (Penguin, 2005), 41-55; 73-84.    

Jean Lipman-Bluman, The Allure of Toxic Leaders (Oxford University Press, 2004), 29-48.

 

 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7:  HOW LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS RELATE

 

    Bruce Mazlish, “Leader and Led” in Barbara Kellerman, Political Leadership: A Source Book (University of Pittsburgh, 1986), 276-286.

    James MacGregor Burns,“The Difference Between Power Wielders and Leaders” in Kellerman, Political Leadership, 287-299.

    J. R. P. French, Jr. and B. Raven, “The Bases of Social Power” in Kellerman, Political Leadership, 300-318,  

    Erik H. Erikson, “On Followers” in Kellerman, Political Leadership, 347.

 

    Reflections on, Totalitarian, Authoritarian, Democratic and Laissez Faire Leadership

 

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12:  TYPES OF FOLLOWERS

 

Kellerman, Followership, 75-93.

Barbara Kellerman, “What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers” in

Harvard Business Review, December 2007, 84-91.

Debra Myerson, Tempered Radicals, How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work (Harvard Business School Press, 2001) 3-33.

 

 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14:  FOLLOWERS IN CONTEXT – SMALL GROUPS AND LARGE ORGANIZATIONS

 

Irving Janis,“Groupthink” in Kelleman, Political Leadership, 327-346.

Barbara Kellerman, Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (Harvard Business School Press, 2004), 51-74, 147-168.

Michael Useem, Leading Up! How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win  (Crown Business, 2001), 1-6.

 

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19: FOLLOWERS IN CONTEXT – THE CASE OF NAZI GERMANY

 

 

 

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Vintage, 1996), 375-415.

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (HarperPerennial edition, originally published in 1992), 159-18.

 

 

 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21:  OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY

 

 

Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (HarperPerrenial, 1974), 1-12; 135-152.

Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Diamond, Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (Yale University Press, 1989), 53-76

Film: “Obedience to Authority”

 

 

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26:  DIS/OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY 

 

 

 

Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007), 3-22, 324-379.

Film on the Greensboro Four: “February 1.”

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27: FILM – SOPHIE SCHOLL

 

6-8 PM

 

 

Location TBA

Pizza and drinks will be served.

 

 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28: CHALLENGING AUTHORITY

 

 

 

Ira Chaleff, The Courageous Follower, (Berett-Kohler, 200?), 87-116. 

    Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 202-227.

            On Whistleblowers: Dennis Moberg and Edward Romar, “Worldcom,” Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, www.scu/ethics/dialogue/candc/cases/worldcom.html and Robert S. Kaplan and David Kiron, “Accounting Fraud at Worldcom” Harvard Business School,  Case # 9-104-071, 1-3, 7-13.

 

 

TUESDAY, MARCH 4: TAKING TO THE STREETS

 

Frances Fox Piven, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) 19-35.

Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History (Penguin, 1968),

 

Selected Readings.

 

 

On Pakistan: Salman Masood, “Swelling Crowds Across Pakistan Denounce Musharraf’s Suspension of Chief Justice” in New York Times, March 17, 2007; Salman Masood, “Violence Puts More Pressure on Musharref” in New York Times, May 14, 2007; Jane Perlez, “Pakistani Lawyers’ Anger Grew as Hope for Changes Withered” in New York Times, November 7, 2007; Carlotta Gall and Jane Perlez, “Reduce Power for Musharraf, Now a Civilian” in New York Times, November 29, 2007; Carlotta Gall, Musharraf Says He’ll Lift Emergency Rule on December 16” in New York Times, November 30, 2007. 

 

 

THURSDAY, MARCH 6: CASE STUDIES AND CURRENT EVENTS

 

 

TUESDAY, MARCH 11: CASE STUDIES AND CURRENT EVENTS

 

 

THURSDAY, MARCH 13: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.

 

    Kellerman, Followership, 211-217

    Kelley, The Power of Followership , 125-147.

    Chaleff, The Courageous Follower, 1-9.

    Gunther Grass, Peeling the Onion: A Memoir (Harcourt, Inc., 2007), 73-89.

 

Part Two

 

 Prerequisite Information and Requirements:

 

This fourth quarter module titled “Followers” is intended to build on and extend the work accomplished in the third quarter module titled, “Followership.”

 

“Followership” is not formally a prerequisite for “Followers.” However, it is expected that all students who take the current module will have completed the following assignments before fourth quarter classes begin on March 18th:

 

•    Read the syllabus for (the first module) “Followership.”

•    Read all the selections for the first assignment for “Followership” (dated Thursday, January 31), titled “Why Followership?”

•    Read all the selections as assigned during the first module, from Barbara Kellerman’s book, Followership.

•    Read the selections as assigned during the first module from Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority and Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect. 

 

 

Course Description:

 

It is widely assumed that leaders are of major importance and followers of only minor importance. This module is, like its immediate predecessor, intended as a corrective. It presumes that followers have always mattered more than is generally understood, and that for a few key reasons they matter more now than they did before. This change is not limited only to a few people in a few places. Individuals, groups, and organizations all over the world, in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, are being affected by shifts that bestow on followers more power and influence, and deprive leaders of less.

 

The module will consider the changing times and focus on actors who until now have been little considered and less understood. In particular we will be differentiating followers one from the other, focusing on a few key followers in a few key situations, and exploring our own roles as subordinates - which, it may be added, nearly all of us are much more often than not. (As well, there are times when we are leaders and followers simultaneously.)  

 

Thus this second module on the general subject of followership is more personal than the first. It consists of objective analyses of the subject at hand. But it also demands of every one in the class that they take a good, hard look at what they do and don’t do in the service of what they believe to be right, no matter their station. For this class does not presume that creating positive change is a prerogative and privilege reserved only for a few, for those designated leaders. Rather it presumes and presupposes that each and every one of us, whatever our rank, has the right, even the responsibility, at least some of the time, to speak truth to power. 

 

 

                                                                       Continued . . .

Course Requirements:

 

•    On Tuesday, April 10th a 4 to 6 page paper is due that addresses a clear and concentrated question prompted by the class readings, discussions, or films.

•    On Thursday, May 1st an 8 to 12 page paper is due that constitutes a case study based on your own experience as a follower - as a subordinate. The case should include a brief description of the situation in which you were embedded, and of the person who was (is) your superior. However the focus should be on you, and on how you responded (or not) to a challenge you faced in your place of work, or in a group or organization of which you were (are) a member, or in the society at large. Several students will be exempt from writing the final paper. Instead they will write a 3 to 4 page executive summary based on their case, and then present their analysis to the class in a format intended for oral rather than written delivery. Students interested in presenting their cases to the class should submit to the instructor and course assistant a brief statement outlining the proposed presentation by April 15th. Selections will be based on originality, diversity, and clear connection to the themes of the course.    

•    All students are expected to participate actively in class discussions. Therefore attendance in class should be considered mandatory.

 

 

Evaluation and Grading

 

Students will be evaluated on the basis of two criteria:

 

1.    the vigor and rigor of their oral participation

 

2.    the creativity and competence of their papers

 

Grades will be determined in rough accord with the following percentages

 

Participation: 50 percent

 

Papers:           50 percent

 

 

Added Notes:

 

First, this module may be taken in conjunction with “Followership” (PAL – 153m – offered during the third quarter); or it may be taken independently. If it is taken independently, the prerequisites indicated above apply.

Second, the use of personal computers is prohibited during class.

Third, in the event you must leave class early, please inform me beforehand.

Fourth, if you must miss more than one class, please explain your situation.

Finally, while this syllabus should be considered final, I do not preclude the possibility of making small changes at a later point.   

 

 

Required Readings:

 

 

•    Course Reading Packets can be purchased at HKS’s Course Materials Office (Belfer, G-6).

 

•    Barbara Kellerman, Followership: How Followers Create Change and Change Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, 2008) is available for purchase at the Harvard COOP.

 

•    All readings are also on reserve in the School Library.

 

 

 

 

************************************************************************

 

 

 

SYLLABUS

 

Tuesday, March 18 – Changing Times

 

    Barbara Kellerman, Followership: How Followers Create Change and Change Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, 2008), 25-47.

James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (Anchor, 2005), 192-223.

    Alan Murray, Revolt in the Boardroom: The New Rules of Power in Corporate America (Collins, 2007), ix-xxii, 3-33.   

    Andrew Higgins, “Muscular Monks: How Buddhism Became Force for Political Activism, From China to Myanmar, Once-Quiescent Creed Spurs New Campaigns” in Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2007. Available online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, March 20 – Changing Harvard

 

    “Gender Gap” in Harvard Magazine, March – April, 2005.

 

    Jason Zengerle, “Harvard Coup: The Faculty Attack on Summers” in The New Republic, March    7, 2005.                                                               

 

“At Odds” in Harvard Magazine, May-June, 2005. 

    Marcella Bombardieri, “Summers Waged Final, Futile Battle” in The Boston Globe, February 23, 2006.

    Note: All materials available online.

 

 

Spring Break

 

 

Tuesday, April 1 – Followers as Targets of Power, Authority, and Influence

 

    Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cornell University Press, 2004), 30-65.

    Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Quill, William Morrow, originally published in 1984), xi-xiv, 1-16, 273-280.

Howard Gardner, Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds (Harvard Business School Press, 2004), 14-19, 69-89.

 

Film in class: “Human Experiments”

 

Thursday, April 3 – Types of Followers: Isolates and Bystanders

 

    Kellerman, Followership, 75-124.

    Barbara Kellerman, Bad Leadership: What It Is, Why It Happens, How it Matters (Harvard Business School Press, 2004), 169-190.

    Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (2007), 313-319. 

 

 

Tuesday, April 8 – Types of Followers: Participants and Activists

 

            Kellerman, Followership, 125-177.

           John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (Harcourt Brace & Co.,   1998), 90-111.   

 

    Guest Lecturer: Peter Pollard

 

Thursday, April 10 – Types of Followers: Diehards     

 

    Kellerman, Followership, 179-209.

    Guido Knopp (with Hartl), “The Firebrand: Joseph Goebbels” in Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Henchman (Sutton, 1996), 9-54.

 

 

  Tuesday, April 15 – Focus on Followers - Iraq (I)

 

    Andrew Block with Barbara Kellerman, “Subordinate Supposedly Subdues Iraq: The Decision to Disband the Iraqi Military,” Unpublished Case Study, 2008.

    Iraq case will be distributed prior to this class.

 

Guest Speaker: Andrew Block

 

 

Thursday, April 17 – Focus on Followers - Iraq (II)      

 

    Michael R. Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (Vintage, 2007), 168-187, 524-544, 545-557, 583-588.

    Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Penguin, 2006), 149-168.

    Note: Recommended sequence includes reading the first several selections from Gordon and Trainor to start, then the selection from Ricks, and concluding with Gordon and Trainor, 583-588.

 

 

 

Tuesday, April 22 – The Follower in You: Self Assessments

 

    Ira Chaleff, The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Ourselves (Berrett-Koehler, 2003), 35-56.

    Robert Kelley, The Power of Followership: How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and Followers Who Lead Themselves (Doubleday, 1992), 87-125.

 

 

Wednesday, April 23: Film: “Jonestown”

 

6-8 pm

Room: Littauer 382,  Kahn Seminar Room

Pizza and drinks will available

 

 

Thursday,  April 24 – Case Studies and Current Events

 

 

Tuesday, April 29 – Case Studies and Current Events

 

 

Thursday, May 1 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (reprise)

 

    Kellerman, Followership, 211-261.

    Thomas Friedman, “Generation Q” in New York Times, October 10, 2007.

    Andrei D. Sakharov, “How I Came to Dissent,” Sakharov Speaks (Knopf, 1974), 132-136.

 

PROFILE: Barbara Kellerman is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership, from 2000 to 2003; and from 2003 to 2006 she served as the Centers Research Director. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala Universities. She also served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Fairleigh Dickinson, and as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

 

 

Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (1975, in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala (1996-97), she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA), and is author and editor of many books including Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives;The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership; and Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and Business. She has appeared often on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, Reuters and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Harvard Business Review.

 

 

Her most recent books are Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (2004); a co-edited (with Deborah Rhode) volume, Women & Leadership: State of Play and Strategies for Change (2007); and Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (2008). Kellerman speaks to audiences around the world, including in recent years in Berlin, London, Moscow, Rome, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai. She holds an Honorary Degree from Ripon College, and is currently ranked by Leadership Excellence as 6th on the list of the 100 best minds on leadership. For instant information on Kellerman's recent thinking see her regular blog, "Political Animals," at http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/index_dl.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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