The Future of Leadership: Why Great Teams Need More Than Leaders – Robert Kelley

Welcome to lead and follow a podcast that explores how great collaboration actually happens. I’m your host, Sharna Fabiano, author of the book, lead and follow the dance of inspired teamwork. And I’m pleased to bring you the latest research insights and learning methods to help you work together better with the people around you. I help founders, solopreneurs and new leaders become great at collaborating because I’ve seen how much more becomes possible when people integrate their ideas, perspectives, and strengths in a practical way.

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Today, I’m honored to be speaking with Dr. Robert Kelly. Robert is a distinguished service professor of management at the Tupper school of business at Carnegie Mellon university. He pioneered the concept of followership in his bestselling book, the power of followership and in his Harvard business review article in praise of followers, a top 25 bestselling reprint for HBR, which changed the prevailing view of leadership.

Another one of Robert’s books, how to be a star at work was honored as one of the 100 best business books of all time and the number one career book by the New York daily news. As president of CEO consulting, Dr. Kelly helps national and international clients like AT&T and Bosch and consults with government officials and executives across the globe from the U S to China, to the EU. I’m very, very honored to have Robert on the show today and very eager to hear his current thinking on citizen level followership in this political moment we find ourselves in Robert, welcome to the podcast.

Hello to you, Sharna. It’s good to be here with you. Before we get into the big questions, Robert, I know your students at Carnegie Mellon call you Dr. K.

So it was wondering if you would delight us with a little story about that before we start. Sure. When I came to Carnegie Mellon, we have a pretty active student body and I was teaching a group of graduate students in our MBA program who were saying that they played basketball. And so I played basketball in high school and in college.

And so they heard about that and they said, well, why don’t you come play with us? So I said, sure, I’d be happy to do that. But I could tell that they would look at me because I was a good 10, 15 years older than they were. I think they thought they were doing me a favor by letting me put my shoes on again and get out there with them.

But as the game went on, and this is in their words, not mine, I schooled them on basketball. And as a result of that, they called me Dr. K, which resonates with, of course, the famous Dr. J, Julius Irving.

And let me just say that I’m not at Dr. J’s league by any means. He was a fantastic player. And the difference between my students and me is much, much smaller than the difference between me and Dr.

J. But that’s how it came about and it has stuck ever since. Beautiful. Well, it speaks to the warm connection you have with your students.

Thank you for sharing that. I have very good relationships with my students. The reason I teach, and I know not all professors feel this way, a lot of them think that the research comes first. But I teach because I like my students and I like being in the classroom with them.

I like what they learn in the classroom and I really love what they teach me over all these years. So I’ve learned a lot from my students. Well, you are living the lead and follow dream for sure. Teaching and learning is yet another gorgeous example of leading and following.

And we can switch roles in the classroom too. Okay. I’m excited to hear your thoughts on followership and politics. You know, it’s on everyone’s mind.

I think right now, you know, there’s a lot going on. Let’s just hear you give us a little bit of your high level thinking on, you know, how to think about followership in this particular political climate we’re in right now. Well, I think that’s a big question because what we’re seeing is, and it’s actually happening on a global scale, where we’re seeing governments where we have leaders who are not very popular, but who are using the power of government to control their populations and to consolidate their power. And not to simplify, but in this kind of situation, I think of followership in terms of who are the people who are actually following these people who believe in the authoritarian leader and what is their reason for following.

And then there’s also another group that’s saying, well, wait a minute, we’ve got to hold on here. The first group is, you know, following the demands of the authoritarian leader. But there’s a whole another group of us who are saying that, no, we were following the demands of a democratic society built on a constitution, the rule of law, and historical norms of how people interact with each other. And I think about that.

And I think that one thing we’ve not explored very much in the followership field is follower motivation. You know, why do they actually follow? And what are the rewards they get from following? I know a lot of people have referenced my work over the years, but I think one part of my original work that didn’t get much and hasn’t gotten much referencing is that when I talk about what is it that drives people to follow and that our followers who get shaped by being loyal to a leader and all the benefits that come from being loyal to a leader, and so I’ll just call them, you know, they’re shaped by that relationship versus people who are shaped by their own personal goals who are using attaching themselves to a leader as a way to fulfill their own personal goals.

If we think here in the United States, you might compare Kristi Noem, who was recently head of the Department of Homeland Security, where I think she was just thrilled by the relationship she had with Donald Trump. And that’s what she wanted out of it was that relationship versus somebody like Stephen Miller, who’s the, you know, immigration guru, or I should say anti-immigration guru, where I think he’s attached himself to Trump, not because he really wants to have that relationship, but he sees Trump as providing him an opportunity to carry out things that he thinks are important. But there’s also, you know, we could compare, you know, JD Vance versus Marco Rubio, where JD Vance, I think, is very much into the relationship, and he’s molded himself with his relationship with Trump. And, of course, he’s got his own personal goals.

He wants to be president, I think, at some point, but he’s really, you know, hooked his star to Trump versus Marco Rubio. You see him sometimes with Trump, but for the most part, he’s just, you know, biding his time and doing some things that he thinks will help him be elected president. And I think it’s, you can also see it as there are some people who are followers because they see it as a chance to express themselves. You know, this is who I am, the kind of person I am, versus those who see the followership role as a way to transform themselves.

So they want to become something different than they currently are. And they think by getting into a followership role, particularly with a strong authoritarian leader, they can become a different person that will make them feel better about themselves. And this is a long way of, you know, saying that I think we need to look at the motivation of why people are following, who they’re following, why they’re following. And therefore, what can we expect them to do?

And in some cases, how do we change that behavior? And so I think that we’re going to see moving forward, particularly if the authoritarian loses, as we just saw recently in Hungary, what’s going to happen to all those people who enable that person to do all the things and break all the laws? What’s going to happen to them? So anyway, I think that it’s a very complicated situation right now.

And I think we’re going to need to, as students of followership and researchers, we’re going to have a very fertile field here moving forward as we try to sort all this out. Thank you. Yeah. Looking at this through the lens of motivation does change it a little bit, even for me, you know, as someone who maybe would like different things to be happening.

You know, it’s easy to feel stressed, you know, and paralyzed and confused. But, you know, just asking myself, okay, why are these people following? Because that is what ultimately gives, you know, the leader power, helps demystify it a little bit for me. I wonder if you could, I wonder if you have any other thoughts on like what thinking about followers’ motivations does for us, right?

I think you started to speak a little bit about that. Well, if I can maybe use the example, if we compare Trump’s first term versus his second term, because I think in his first term, he surrounded himself in the cabinet with people who were devoted to the country, not to Trump himself. And they saw themselves as providing guardrails to his authoritarian impulses. And it’s interesting if you look back, you know, most people have forgotten this, but, you know, 14 of his cabinet members quit.

And, you know, there were like, I think, a half a dozen cabinet positions that had, cabinet or very high-level positions that had three to eight people who kind of rotated through there within four years. That was one set of followers. They weren’t devoted to Trump. And many of them had military backgrounds like John Kelly and Mattis and some of the others.

And, you know, they had served their whole lives serving the country. And that’s what they thought their role as a follower was. Now, you look at the second term, and what we see is a whole different cabinet, you know, filled with people who I think, you know, most people see as pretty unqualified and incompetent in the positions they’ve been placed in. Their major qualification has been their willingness to do whatever Trump says to do.

And so, I think that’s a very different motivation for them. And so, I think that when we think as followers, is our major responsibility to be a guardrail, to help keep the leader from making mistakes, or is our job to enable the leader to do whatever the leader wants to do? And, you know, you can see it kind of both ways, right? That on the one hand, we want to help the leader accomplish the goals that both the leaders and the followers have agreed upon.

But then you also have the responsibility to say, no, wait a minute, that’s not going to get us where we want to go, or it might get us where we want to go, but it’s going to leave us all worse off. Of course, the most current situation right now is what’s happening over with the Iran War, right? Nobody spoke up and said, you know, if you start this, here’s some downside consequences. And it appears that none of those people, as I say, I don’t think too many of them were qualified, but I’m sure that were people in the military who spoke up, but nobody was willing to say, so don’t do this.

This is going to be a mistake. And so, I think that people who are members of the Trump cult, they’re not going to speak up. And I think people with their own agenda aren’t going to speak up. Again, to use Stephen Miller, it would surprise me if he cares what’s going on over in Iran, as long as he can keep moving on his anti-immigration agenda.

And so, I think we see people who just don’t have an interest in either protecting the leader from making mistakes or protecting the larger society that we live in. Yeah, I was really struck by your initial comparison between following a person, right, versus following an idea, right, like protecting democracy. And that leads to a really different set of choices, right, for the individual. And I know you mentioned also earlier that this is happening globally.

So, there’s a dynamic between leaders and followers everywhere that are struggling with various levels of authoritarianism. I wonder if you have any thoughts on the global situation, if there’s anything different about that versus here in the U. S.? Well, I think there’s three major groups of countries right now.

There are those who are already authoritarian. So, you take Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. They then had strong control over their countries and solidified their power over their own citizens. Then there’s a group who are becoming more authoritarian.

And I put the USA, at least currently, right in there. I think India is another country. Turkey is another one. El Salvador.

And these are countries that have a democratic tradition, but they’re moving the direction, becoming more authoritarian. And then I think there’s a third group who are those who are rejecting authoritarian. Again, most recently, Hungary in the election last weekend, but also Ukraine, Poland, South Korea. And what strikes me is that these are all countries that have kind of the most recent history of authoritarianism.

And so, people have lived under it, particularly in South Korea last year when the president declared martial law. And what you saw was an uprising of ordinary citizens saying, no, 20 years ago, we lived under martial law and authoritarian leader, and we’re not going back there. So, I think that what we’re seeing is kind of a struggle, worldwide struggle as to which direction are we moving in with each individual country, but also globally. It’s not a struggle just in today’s.

It’s been going on for centuries, right, as to what kind of government works best for each country, but also globally. It’s going to be interesting to me how it plays out. I’d kind of like to see personally that we have more countries rejected as Hungary and Poland and many of the Eastern European countries have done. So, we in the followership community are so often talking about agency and power in the followership role, because we really want others to understand that both the leading and the following role have influence, right, not just the leading role.

But a lot of people right now are telling me, understandably, that they don’t feel very powerful as citizen followers. What would you say is going on in terms of agency with our current political leader-follower dynamics? Essentially, you say that because I remember after Trump got elected and he started moving very quickly to basically attack institutions, because that’s one of the things, if you read any of the literature on, in fact, Ruth Ben-Ghiar did a book called Strongmen, and it looks at basically the rise of authoritarian leaders and fascism. And one of the first things they try to do is attack institutions.

And so, when we saw that Trump, he went after universities, he went after law firms, he went after individual states, and all this was an attempt to try to weaken them so he could consolidate his power. And likewise, he tried to alter some other institutions by putting more of his people. If you watch carefully, you’ll notice that the media landscape has changed since he came into power, starting with TikTok. TikTok was supposed to be sold or closed down last year before Trump took power.

But when he came in, he postponed that. And he basically maneuvered to get Larry Ellison to be the person who was able to buy TikTok. And Larry Ellison is a pro-Trump person, but he didn’t have all the money to do that. So, they actually had to go to some of the Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE to, in their sovereign wealth funds, to put up the money to Larry Ellison so that he could do it.

We saw it also play out with the buying of Warner, Discovery, and Paramount, where Netflix was in the final battle with Larry Ellison to buy that. And Trump maneuvered for Ellison to get the edge on it because he didn’t want Netflix because Reid Hoffman, who’s one of the co-founders of Netflix, is a Democrat. But what I think about a lot is the TV stations. If you’ve been following that, the two biggest owners of TV stations, between them, they own over 500 television stations, are Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting.

And both of them are very strong Trump supporters. Nexstar is trying to buy another corporation called Tegma. The judge just stopped it, but if it goes through, Nexstar will have control of just about every major media market in the country. So, there’s a long way of saying that there’s been a lot of Trump trying to undermine or control media, as well as many other institutions, as a way to consolidate his power.

I think one of the things that’s going to be hard to unwind is all of these because so many of them will be considered private sector deals. So, it’s going to be hard to unwind those. But it’s one of the ways that authoritarian leaders try to take control and consolidate their power is by basically reducing the institutions from any resistance they might put up. And I think it’s going to be increasingly interesting to see if there’s going to be more resistance or if there’s going to be more capitulation, like we saw in the law firms.

The big law firms of the top 20, I think 17 of them capitulated very easily, but the four of them that didn’t. So, I guess that takes it to 21 instead of 20. Four of them didn’t, and they’ve been able to maintain their standing and, in fact, attract lawyers from the other firms to come to work with them. Robert, I feel like we need to be candid about the emotional effect of all of this.

I am talking to people every day who have either stopped reading the news or who are struggling to get through the day because they’re reading the news. And I know the community that listens to this podcast believes that we have agency in the followership role no matter what. I wonder if you could speak to how we might hold on to that sense of agency, believe there are things that we can do as followers in this moment. When I think of, you know, what can people do about this?

And I was with a group of people shortly after Trump took power. I said, you know, how are we going to resist this? And they said, well, you know, we really can. What can we do?

And my view was, well, you know, there’s a lot of things we can do. Every person, whether an active follower or even a passive follower, has agency. And I always go back to Vaclav Havel, who was the prime minister of the Czech Republic. And helped overthrow the Russian, at that time, USSR influence there.

And he wrote a book called The Power of the Powerless. And he said that each person, you know, can do little things to defile. You don’t have to do big things. You can do little things.

And in his case, it was when the regime tells you to put a sign in the window, you don’t put it in the window. You know, so just little things. And I thought a lot about, you know, what are the little things that people can do? They’ll hold up the state of Minnesota, and particularly Minneapolis-St.

Paul, as an example of that. In fact, they created a new term, which they call neighboring, which is looking out for each other’s neighbors. And so the neighbors there, when they saw what ICE was doing in their community, they did all sorts of little things. So they went grocery shopping for their immigrant neighbors so that they wouldn’t have to be out in the public.

They drove the immigrant children to school so that they were in a car driven by somebody who was Caucasian. And so unlikely to be stopped, when ICE appeared, they blew whistles. When there were reports of women who shared breast milk with their neighbors, you know, they took videos of the ICE aggression. So there’s lots of little things that they did to accomplish neighboring.

A lot of people say, well, we can’t do anything, but all you have to do is little things. And of course, there’s bigger things you can do. You can call your congressional reps on a regular basis and let them know what you want them to vote for or vote against. You can go to protests.

You can, you know, help get out the vote for the upcoming elections. You can not shop at businesses which support authoritarian leaders. And one of my favorites is both in Hungary and Poland, judges and law professors went to the rural communities to educate them about civics and civics responsibility. So they weren’t saying, oh, don’t, you know, they weren’t saying vote for this person or vote for that person.

Just said, you know, here’s what it means to have a democracy. And here’s what the rule of law is. And here’s what our responsibility as citizens are, what we do for our communities, but also how we keep our leaders on the right track. The idea is just don’t give up.

There are lots of things you can do. I resonate so much with that word neighboring. I feel like it bridges the public and private and helps us understand that caring for ourselves and our neighbors and the people close to us is actually a political act. It’s not just when you go to a protest, for example, that you’re being political.

It’s those everyday community actions too that directly impact how we live together in our society. I want to jump ahead a little and ask about the future. I obviously have my own bias here. I would like to live in a more democratic environment myself.

How do you imagine the followers of Trump or the followers of the current administration might be held accountable for the harm they’re doing right now? Yeah, I think it’s going to be tricky. And the reason is what we’re seeing right now is an administration of retribution. So Trump and his cash patel and the FBI and the DOJ, they’re going after all the people who questioned Trump and what he was doing in his first term, trying to turn the tables on them, if you will, and make them suffer.

Should Trump be voted out of office or pushed out of office even before that, the question is going to be, well, what do you do with all these people he’s put in places? You know, everything from important things like the DOJ and the FBI or the less important, you know, who’s on the board of the Kennedy center. What are we going to do with all these people? Are we going to leave them in their jobs or are we going to purge them?

And if we purge them, then do they say, well, it’s just you’re just doing retribution in reverse. You know, I’ve heard some people say, you know, maybe we need to have Nuremberg trials just like they did after the Holocaust and, you know, and hold these people accountable. And you hear that from some of the Democrats like J. D.

Pritzker saying, you know, we’ve got pictures of what you’ve been doing. We’ve got evidence, you know, so we’re keeping it, we’re accumulating it. So they’re trying to tell them that, you know, you keep this up, then you’re going to pay the price for it. I think what’s probably the model that comes better to my mind is what Nelson Mandela did after the ending of apartheid through his truth and reconciliation, that the idea was, you know, if you came forward and admitted what you did and apologized for it, then, you know, we could reconcile with you.

If you didn’t, then you were going to go to trial. And so I think that that model might work better in terms of as seen as evidence of good faith, that what we’re trying to do is get ourselves back on the right track. And we need to have everybody on that. But I think, as I said, I think it’s going to be very tricky how we do that.

And I think we have to be very careful because we don’t want it to turn into who’s ever in power gets to go after the other side. It just keeps going back and forth and back and forth. But on the other hand, I think that we have had some crimes committed. Authoritarian leaders, when they break the norms, then it’s one thing to break the norm, it’s another to break the law.

And, you know, if laws have been broken, then people have to have a spotlight shown on that. And then we figure out how to, you know, what we do moving forward after that. You mentioned a few things that we could do every day earlier. I just wonder if there’s any other guidance you’d like to leave for listeners who might be, you know, like me, wanting to advocate for democracy during this difficult time.

What can we do, right? I’m not in the cabinet. I’m not one of those high level followers. But if I think of myself as a follower who still has some agency, you know, what would you say to me?

What is, if you can’t do it, support the institutions that are doing it. So, you know, like the ACLU, the sort of number of organizations, some of the immigration associations to support them, you know, send them money or join them and get active in those organizations so that you can be, if you will, part of the action of what they’re doing. A second thing is get together with like-minded people. I think what I see a lot is people who are feeling really discouraged by what’s going on, but they’re being discouraged in their own rooms or their own apartments or wherever.

And I think, you know, another way to find people like you is to sit, talk, and then ask yourself, what can we do? You know, what can we do individually? But there’s five of us. What could we do?

And something else is just about everybody has a cell phone. Go through your contacts in your cell phone and contact those people and ask them, you know, what are they doing? First, they may give you ideas, but it also might stir them to do something. They might say to them, oh, you know, I should be doing something.

I think we don’t think enough about our own networks and how we can use them both for support but also to help get things done. And so one of the things that I try to do is before the election, I try to blast people in my contacts to say, you know, remember to vote. Think about that. You know, what’s the world that each of us lives in?

We have this, you know, world and, you know, one of the things they say most people have about 250 friends and they base that on the number of people who show up for weddings and funerals. And so if you think, well, that’s a lot of people that you can influence to join the resistance, if you will, or to support alternative leaders. To me, I think the real news of this time that’s not getting much attention at all is the lack of leaders. What we’re seeing are people who should be leading and particularly getting involved in protecting institutions and they’re just collapsing.

So you look at the GOP Congress is a good example of this. You know, they’re not doing their job, but we see it also, you know, business leaders should be. And instead of resisting, you know, there’s something up. So I think it’s almost like all, you know, the traditional places we look for leadership, all that has collapsed.

And it’s not totally across the board, but the vast majority of it is. And I think that to me, that’s the real news story. What happened to all the leaders? And so, and what it suggests to me, again, as a student of this, is that maybe leadership has run its course in terms of a societal institution.

In fact, I read a piece again back on Minnesota where somebody said, this is really different because there’s hundreds of leaders throughout the whole city and nobody knows their names. And so, and I thought, I read that and I said, well, yeah, maybe we’re calling them leaders, but maybe they’re just people who say we don’t need leaders. Well, this is definitely sparking something for me. And as listeners know, I am always looking for inspiration, something to keep my own energy up.

So I would love to ask you to say a little more about that. What happens when we go beyond leadership, Robert? What are you seeing out there that makes you think there is something new coming? I think it’s all being redesigned in real time.

And that the idea that, you know, leaders initiate and leaders direct and leaders control, yeah, that happens in some situations. But I think increasingly what I see is that people come together to get things done. And in the past, and maybe even today, it can be efficient to say, okay, you do the leadership stuff and we’ll do the followership stuff. But what I see increasingly is people saying, well, we need to get this done, whatever it is.

Who’s gonna do what? And it used to be, you know, the leader would tell people what they’re gonna do. And I see more people collectively saying, well, I can do this piece and I can do that piece. And it reminds me, you know, I’ve studied particularly World War I, World War II, and, you know, there’s so much talk about the generals, et cetera.

But one of the things that always struck me as I did that is when the captain or the lieutenant got shot, it was, lo and behold, you know, the soldiers, they knew what to do, you know? And it wasn’t like, okay, who’s gonna be the leader now? Who’s gonna tell us what to do? You know, they already knew what they needed to do.

And so they said, yeah, that role’s gone, but we still know how to get the job done. And I think that model is increasingly coming to fore is that there’s gonna be more and more where we say, you know, maybe the old model of leader follower is not the right model anymore, and… or at least not the dominant model. You know, it’ll have its place, you know, for certain things.

But that more and more what we’re gonna see is people collectively coming together. And the other is that I’m also saying is, and I’m a big advocate of this, and companies, they have so many teams and committees and task forces. And the question I say is, you know, in the old days, one or two people would do that. Why are you having five people do it?

So I think what we might be moving towards is sometimes a group needs to get together and people will then divvy up the work. But other times people say, I’ll just go do it, you know? And I’m not a leader, I’m not a follower, I’m just getting it done, whatever it needs to get done. And, you know, I’ll do my share and somebody else will do what they’re doing.

So in some ways, I think it’s gonna be a lot more individual agency. If you’ve got an idea, you make it happen rather than going to the leader and saying, okay, I gave you my idea, now you go make it happen for me. That’s sometimes referred to as the monkey on the back problem, which is you’re the leader, so now I tell you an idea, now I put the monkey on your back, you’re supposed to go make it happen for us. And I think that this notion of dependency, being dependent on the leader for direction or to get things done, I think hopefully we’re evolving as a society where that’s less necessary.

So I’m actually kind of optimistic because I think we’re testing out new models of how humans get things done together. And it’s pretty clear to me that the old model, particularly represented in government, is not working in many countries. Yeah, thank you. You’ve thrown out a number of great ideas already.

I wonder if you have any other practical tips or guidance for folks, either in government, in business, in their everyday lives, to practice or uplift this more flexible, just working together, getting things done way of operating. Yeah, well, I think part of it is recognizing that, first, you have support. You have friends, you have neighbors. And then bringing that together.

I see this most vividly inside with the companies that I work with where they actually have a pretty ineffectual leader of a department. And then how do the people who work with that person, how do they respond? Because the traditional way we think about it is that, oh, the leader is the good person who knows what’s doing and his followers who are the laggards, right? And I refer to that as the John Wayne.

We’ve always got a John Wayne to go in there and clean things up. But what I see more and more is that it’s actually the reverse. The people in leadership positions are not doing what we would consider a good job. And so where does that leave the people who are, quote, subordinates?

And increasingly, what I see them say is either we got to get rid of this person. So we set them up for failure so that somebody higher up in the organization will notice and say, oh, yeah, we got to get rid of that person. Or they just act like that person’s not there. So they get the work done and they basically exclude that person.

And it’s interesting to me that I’m seeing more and more of that. But it’s also interesting, again, to go back to Trump’s cabinet, is it appears to me that in many of the departments, people in the department are creating situations to expose the weaknesses of the people who are in charge. And I think, you know, I don’t know if you saw the Atlantic article on Kash Patel. To me, that’s a clear case of the people who are lower down the rank saying, we got to get rid of this guy because he’s harming the institution.

But I think the same thing happened over in the Department of Labor with Chavez. We saw it with DOJ, with Biondi. So I think we’re going to see more and more, if you will, revolutions or revolts by the people who are, you know, trying to protect the institutions and trying to get rid of the incompetence. Yeah, well, I look forward to that.

What comes up for me in the business realm here is I always want to, like, change the financial structure, right? Because, like, that’s part of the problem, right? The incentives are all set up to, like, funnel upward, right? Whereas people actually getting the work done are paid less.

But, like, what if we change the whole, you know, incentive structure there? When I work with clients, I tell them, you know, the most important decision you make is that people who work here identify the talent, pay the talent, retain the talent. And when I see companies where the people high up the food chain get paid a heck of a lot of money and they’re barely paying the people lower down enough to be able to have a standard of living of any kind, and I think to myself, that’ll work to get money into your pockets. But I don’t see this organization succeeding long term with that model.

Yeah, agreed on all levels, right, in all sectors. Before we close, Robert, there are now people everywhere, right? You and I both know there’s a global network of folks connecting and collaborating on this effort to uplift not only followership, but this more fluid way of working together. How can we leverage this network?

You know, where do you think we go from here, maybe thinking a little longer term? Again, I’m optimistic when I think of that there’s been just about 250 articles in the last 10 years. Well, that’s 25 articles a year. That’s a lot on this topic.

So I think that there’s a wider embrace, if you will, of followership as a field. And I think the fact that it’s global, so we’ve got people all over, which to me is interesting because the leadership field, as big as it is, doesn’t really have much of a global feel to it. Most of the work is done in Western countries. And there’s not a whole lot of comparative work done in the leadership area.

I don’t want to say there’s none, but there’s not a lot. But I think we’re seeing more of that in the followership. So to me, that’s a good sign. I think the other is, I think that one of the things that we as a field can do is to educate people better about their own thoughts on leadership and followership.

Followership has had a bad name for forever. You know, it’s kind of the second place prize. But to the extent that we see things like culturally, you know, where being a follower now on social media is not necessarily a bad thing. And so people are kind of getting used to it and say, oh, yeah, the follower is not bad.

And I think that’s changing the perception. But I think what I try to do is ask people, what’s it like for you when you’re a follower? And when do you follow? And how do you feel about that?

And do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing? And get them to reflect on their own experience and their own, if you will, biases. And in some ways, it’s kind of like, you know, what the judges and law professors did in Hungary and Poland, which is, you know, they’re out there teaching about civics and civic responsibility. I’m trying to get people to think about, well, how do you think about leadership and followership?

Get them to focus more on that so that they become, if you will, better educated about what these things are. And particularly to try to understand that, you know, this is not something you’re born with. You know, these are roles. And when we use them, we do it because it’s efficient.

But it doesn’t, you know, there are other models also. You know, Robert, there’s a not so subtle move there that you’re making when you turn the question around like that. You’re almost switching roles. You’re reminding the person you’re speaking to that they too have agency.

They too have a very legitimate point of view. They know on some level what makes a good follower, a good leader, or a good collaborator. I appreciate that very much. As we wrap up today, I want to direct listeners, first of all, to the GlobalFollowership.

com website, where they can read about the upcoming conference, where you and I will both be along with many, many other dynamic, amazing thinkers this July 2026 at Indiana Wesleyan University. But Robert, where can listeners follow your work? Two places. One is through my website, kellyideas.

com. And it’s Kelly with two E’s and two L’s. And then through the University of Carnegie Mellon University, the Tepper School of Business. And I should say with the Global Followership Conference, I’m actually going to do a program on the topic we’ve been talking about today, but it’s going to be interactive.

So it’s not going to be just me, but hopefully collectively getting as many ideas as we can. Beautiful. Putting the theory into practice, I see. I cannot wait for that session myself.

Robert, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your deep insights with us. It’s such a pleasure. And I look forward to our next conversation. Well, it’s good to be with you, Sharna.

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