You don’t have to be the boss to impact your organization. The truth is our actions as followers can have a significant effect on our careers, colleagues, organizations, and definitely our leaders. This is often a surprise to many since our culture celebrates and promotes leadership as the primary component for positive change. When we do consider those who are following our leaders, our focus is usually on teams and group dynamics, not on the experience of the individual. This workshop will explore the concept of followership and how it can benefit our libraries. We’ll discuss why we should care about the individual follower, how a single person with limited authority can have a truly positive and organization-wide impact, whether or not it is possible to develop specific traits and skills to maximize our contributions as followers, and how can we support our leaders while remaining true to our personal values. Finally, we’ll evaluate our own performance as followers and strategize ways to improve our abilities in this area.
Participants in this workshop will: - Become familiar with the concept of followership and the connection it has to organizational health. - Recognize the ethical challenges followers face - Identify followership skills and strategies for developing these abilities
