| Book Reviews and Links
Chaleff, Ira; The Courageous Follower — Standing Up To & For Our Leaders, 2003.
This is the updated edition of an important book about business transformation and modern, wholesome leadership.
According to management consultant Chaleff, empowered followership requires an understanding of:
- The leader-follower relationship,
- The roles and challenges of our leaders,
- The dark tendencies of power.
Chaleff believes a central problem in the typical leader-follower relationship is the tendency for it to resemble a traditional parent-child relationship, where the follower is dependent and unable to approach the leader on an equal footing. “Courageous followership,” Chaleff says, is built on a different, more contemporary model of leadership, where both leaders and followers orbit around a common purpose. Courageous followers have:
- The courage to assume responsibility,
- The courage to serve,
- The courage to challenge,
- The courage to participate in transformation,
- The courage to take moral action.
It’s not difficult to conceive of appreciating followers who find new ways to support you, the leader. But you should contemplate the problem, Chaleff says, of having staffers who admire you so much that they don’t want to tell you anything negative, like when you:
- misspell the name of your most important client,
- violate a key cultural norm of the international VIP you’re hosting,
- are about to sign off on a financial statement where there’s a serious flaw that could land you in trouble.
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