Personal development and self-awareness are two critical aspects of both our leadership and followership. If we don’t know who we are, who we can become, and make some effort to get there, the quality of our contributions, in any role or under any title, will always be something less than what they could be.
Two months ago, I developed a Followership Self-Evaluation tool, as one opportunity for reflecting on your current state of engagement and contribution. Now, it’s time to look at the other side of the relationship, for those of you that are also serving in a leadership role.
Leadership Self-Evaluation (free PDF) presents many of the aspects of followership presented in Embracing Followership, but through the lens of leadership. Misconceptions we have about our followers (Chap 3), openness to their contributions (Chap 6), developing a shared sense of ownership (Chap 7), facilitating remedies to various followership challenges (Chaps 8-10), and encouraging excellent followership (Chaps 24-27) are all aspects of leadership that directly impact the potential for quality followership within our team, group, or organization.
This tool is a helpful accompaniment to the companion volume, Embracing Followership: A Discussion Guide for Teams & Small Groups. In particular, using the Leadership Self-Evaluation while working through Study 9, which examines the environment of followership (especially considering the topic of trust), will be a valuable time to consider yourself as a leader and your contribution to the followership-leadership relational dynamic.
Your reflections will provide useful for material to explore with your coach, mentor, supervisor, and even with your subordinates, as you determine how best to facilitate excellent followership amongst all of your colleagues.
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Be sure to check out the other free resources available from our Downloads page:
Followership Self-Evaluation (intro post)
Leader-Follower Lists (intro post)
“If someone gave you…” Activity (explanatory blog post)
Free Sample Study (Study 8: “Honor Thy Colaborer”, with Facilitator’s Notes)
Achieving Satisfying Group Communication (intro post)
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For encouragement and guidance in understanding and applying yourself to following and leading with excellence and helping others to do the same, see:
Embracing Followership: How to Thrive in a Leader-Centric Culture (by Allen Hamlin Jr; Feb 2016), and A Discussion Guide for Teams & Small Groups (Dec 2017).
Along with our variety of free downloadable resources and the index of other posts on this site.
Embracing Followership 