Welcome to the Followership Learning Community

Welcome! The Followership Learning Community has been launched to provide a meeting ground for researchers and practitioners who are engaged in exploring the rich subject of followership.

Up to now, there have been a small number of academics, consultants, trainers and managers who have recognized the importance of the subject of followership in organized human endeavors. They have typically been passionate about the subject and determined to give it the attention it deserves and has historically lacked. They have also tended to be relatively isolated.

 This began to change in 2006 when the Kravis Leadership Institute and the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont University held the first national conference on followership: “Rethinking Followership: New Paradigms, Perspectives and Practices.” Over two exciting days, nearly 200 participants explored the subject from a wide range of perspectives. There was a widely held sense that the opportunity to meet with others who shared a passion for developing the field was extremely valuable and that ways should be found to continue the dialogue. The Followership Community of Learning realizes that desire and vision.

 What is the Followership Learning Community?

I cannot fully answer that as its content and shape will be determined by the community itself as it forms, identifies its needs and generates the resources to meet those needs. It is my hope that we become a small group of dedicated people who Margaret Mead famously said can change the world. How? Through the memetic process of effectively introducing new ideas into the culture that propagate and change the way people think and behave, ultimately changing the very nature of follower-leader relations in ways that benefit humanity.

 As a first step, the Followership Learning Community has launched "The Followership Exchange," a WIKI serving as a participatory and  interactive gathering space, While we evolve what the WIKI becomes, for now it is a place to post information, articles, papers, events, presentations, links to books and audios and videos and whatever else contains relevant information to a community dedicated to creating, sharing and disseminating knowledge about followership. The WIKI will also link to the FOLLOWERSHIP FORUM, a discussion listserv for the community to query, muse, ponder, support, float ideas, seek collaborators, and generally converse on anything and everything related to the research, teaching, practice and communication of followership.

 I invite you to look at the original proposal to establish the Followership Learning Community that was presented to and approved by the ILA board. Would those of you whose circumstances and enthusiasm permit, join an informal steering committee to help share the pleasures of creating and maintaining the WIKI and serving the community? As you will see in the proposal (posted on the sidebar), I have volunteered to coordinate the creation and development of the community for the first year. I've invested resources into preparing for the launch and have had the great fortune of being supported in this task by Elisabeth Higgins Null. Elisabeth, better known as Lisa around the virtual office, has created the WIKI design and will be the WIKI's virtual  librarian for this start up phase, helping new community members post information and implementing suggestions for improving the design and function of the WIKI within the time she can devote to this. You can contact Lisa  by clicking "Administrators" towards the top of the right-hand sidebar.

The Followership Learning Community and its WIKI are open to anyone interested in the field. However, if you become an active member of the community, and are not yet a member of ILA who is hosting it, we will strongly encourage you to join ILA and participate in and support the wider community it creates.

If you would like to get more involved in developing the Followership Learning Community, or have a specific project you would like to initiate within the community, please contact me directly under "Administrators" or even more directly at ira.chaleff@exe-coach.com.

 I look forward to a wealth of interactions between community members!

 Ira Chaleff

www.courageousfollower.com

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