Books and Articles

THE POWER OF FOLLOWERSHIP
How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and Followers Who Lead Themselves
ISBN 0-385-41306-8
Currency / Doubleday

BOOK SUMMARY
For three thousand years, business has studied, worshipped, and spent billions in training and developing leaders. All this focused attention has led to a profound blindness about and misconception of so-called followers the people of exceptional ability who know how to lead themselves. They are the people, says Robert Kelley, who actually contribute more than 80 percent to the success of any project, any organization, while leaders at best contribute only 20 percent.

This is a rare book, one that will leave you with almost no bias intact. In it you will learn about work and work satisfaction as you've never quite understood them before. A consultant and business professor, Kelley has spent the last seven years learning what makes some followers exemplary at their work. How is it that many know more about self-leadership than the people we call leaders? How is it that most followers are satisfied by their jobs in a way that few leaders can hope to experience? Kelley has found dozens of surprises.

• Ambition is less and less a correlate of success.
  
• Groups with many leaders can be chaotic. Groups with none can be very productive.
  
• There are styles of followership, just as there are styles of leadership.
  
• Organizations have a lot to learn from how followers would reinvent the leadership position.
  
• In the future, the focus will be on followers, both internationally and domestically. In organizations everywhere, there will be increased emphasis on teams, collaboration, ESOPs, and grassroots movements.

THE POWER OF FOLLOWERSHIP is ultimately a book for followers and leaders both, because it shows how each is increasingly fulfilling the role of the other. As Heraclitus said of the gods, "We live each other's lives, we die each other's deaths." In the final analysis, leaders and followers need to understand how mutual and shared both their responsibilities and rewards must be.

THE BOOK'S TABLE OF CONTENTS
Warning: Leadership May Be Hazardous for You

1. If the People Will Lead, the Leaders Will Follow
2. The Difference Between Success and Failure in the 21st Century Organization
3. Why Become a Follower?
4. Enoughness
5. Identifying your Followership Style
6. The Skills of Exemplary Followers
7. How Followers Weave a Web of Relationships
8. The Courageous Conscience
9. Ten Steps to a Courageous Conscience
10. Leadership Secrets from Exemplary Followers
Postscript: The Future of Following

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