Lead & Follow

Send Fan Mail by Text! Fran Kick is an author, educational consultant, and professional speaker who works with corporate and educational organizations that want to develop better leadership and smarter followership for faster long-term results. As a company owner, entrepreneur, and consultant, Fran combines his master’s degree and clinical background in Educational Psychology with over 30 years in...

Send Fan Mail by Text! If you’re a strongly narrative thinker, you may respond to any kind of question by telling a story. That usually starts by providing considerable background information and then describing what happened in chronological order. Stories are definitely a crucial part of how we learn, but they can also be time-consuming and therefore sometimes distracting. Abstract thinkers like...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Michael Christoff, Senior Associate and Practice Leader for Architecture at Vocon, shares his insights about leadership and followership roles in the flow of organizational work and on design projects specifically.  Michael graduated from Kent State University with his Master in Architecture and from John Carroll University with his MBA. Throughout his career, Michael has wo...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Your lead & follow coaching tip for today is Stretch Before Meetings Pre-meeting stretches, especially if you can stand up to do them, wake up your body so that you can connect more easily and more quickly to other people. Just 15 seconds is enough! One the reasons the quick stretch works is that when you sit still for long periods of time, whole sections of your nervous...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Your lead & follow coaching tip for today is Dress Comfortably This tip comes straight from my training as a social dancer, which includes a big focus on subtle non-verbal communication. To understand why this might be important in a professional context, think about communication in a very broad sense, not only as the words you speak or write, but also as the non-verbal...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I speak with Dan Jenkins, Professor of Leadership & Organizational Studies at the University of Southern Maine about his collaborative work integrating specific methods for training followership into leadership programs, and tracking the impressive results! Dan received his doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction with an emphasis in Higher Education Administration from...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I speak with Dr. Yolonda Tonette Sanders, who shares her recent dissertation research on connections between followers' emotional intelligence and their followership styles, and what this means for leaders in organizations of all kinds. Dr. Sanders is an Ohio native, co-founder of Traction , an organizational change consulting company, and of the Faith and Fellowship Bo...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I speak with Grace Wright, board president of the Euclid Hunger Center and  community resource manager at University Settlement, a social service agency serving the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.  She has worked in hunger relief services for the last 12 years, managing hunger centers in the Greater Cleveland area. She has an undergraduate degree in social wo...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I speak with Chad Bennett, Director of Technology for Sturgis Public Schools in Michigan and Tech/Production Director for Radiant Life Church.  Chad will complete his Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Leadership from Indiana Wesleyan University in April 2023, and in this episode, he shares his experience in the program learning leadership and followership together...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I speak with Michael Linville and Mark Rennaker about their new textbook, Essentials of Followership: Rethinking the Leadership Paradigm with Purpose , and about the Division of Leadership and Followership Studies at Indiana Wesleyan University. The textbook is an absolute game-changer and every leadership education program in the country needs it! “Why are we even together...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I talk with Scott Allen, PhD, professor of management at John Carroll University, on integrating followership into leadership education and training, especially through the Collegiate Leadership Competition, which he co-founded. Scott is also an author and the host of the podcast Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders, and he regularly leads workshops across industries.  “T...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Henry Sergent is a third year student at Christopher Newport University and a participant in its unique President’s Leadership program, which now includes a whole course on Followership. He shares his experiences putting both leadership and followership into practice organizing the student golf club, in a late-night fraternity meeting, and on a clothing brand photo shoot! Th...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Lawson Herold is a recent alumni of Christopher Newport University’s unique President's Leadership program which now includes a whole course on Followership. He shares leadership and followership insights from his work as a crew member aboard the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser at the Disney World Resort in Orlando. This episode is Part 2 of a 3-part series, exploring th...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Lori Throupe and Lacey Grey Hunter, who are faculty and staff, respectively, at Christopher Newport University, share how they have integrated followership into a pre-existing campus-wide leadership program, work that has culminated into a full followership course. This episode is Part 1 of a 3-part series. In Parts 2 and 3, you'll hear from alumni and current students...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Puppeteer and educator Kelsey Kato shares his observations and insights of leadership and followership in puppetry through his work with Rogue Artists Ensemble, a Los Angeles theater company, and as a performer and guide at Noah’s Ark, an ongoing children’s exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center. * “It feels very comforting to have a puppeteer who is leading to be giving...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I talk with Pedro Portela, a complex systems thinking coach and a self-described network enthusiast living in Portugal. An engineer by training, Pedro is now a freelance consultant for peace building and conflict transformation. We explore how followership skills play a vital role in peace building initiatives as well as how understanding healthy leading and following dynami...

Send Fan Mail by Text! In this episode, I switch roles with one of my previous guests, Eran Magen, who guest-hosts this week and takes us on a provocative and philosophical journey into the nature of human relationship. We cover a lot of terrain starting from my very first social dance steps to the larger implications of rewriting the conventional script of leading and following roles at work and...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Dancer/Choreographer Daniel Burkholder shares his experience with leading and especially following through the improvisational forms of Contact Improvisation and Feldenkrais Method. Daniel choreographs, improvises, performs, teaches dance and the Feldenkrais Method, and practices mindfulness. His choreographic/improvisational work spans theatrical performances, site-specific...

Send Fan Mail by Text!  Dr. Eran Magen shares his insights around listening as a core followership skill and how the right balance of leading and following helps us form connected, supportive relationships. Dr. Magen earned his M.A. in education and Ph. D. in psychology from Stanford University, completed post-doctoral training in population health as a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Sch...

Send Fan Mail by Text! This episode is a reflective conversation on the creative process with an artist I have long admired, composer and multi-instrumentalist Glover Gill.  Glover and I take a trip down memory lane as we chat about our collaboration on the making of a dance theater piece called Uno back in 2008. Glover also shares insights about leading and following in his collaborations with ot...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Tova Moreno is a theatrical tailor in NYC. She shares her observations of leading and following in her work with her mentor, Artur Allakhverdyan, at Artur & Tailors, Ltd. in New York City.  We explore the role of play and lightness in sustaining healthy working relationships over time, and how she expresses these qualities through both followership and leadership.  “Play...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Dr. Carri Dominick is a physical therapist and lifelong athlete. We talk through the dynamics of collaboration on her volleyball team, and how the players lead and follow one another during actual, moment-to-moment game play. Even though players do have formal roles on a competitive team, their actual leading and following actions are fluid based on who has the ball and wher...

Send Fan Mail by Text! My guest on the podcast this week is Martin Heuschober, a software programmer, blues dancer, and player of table top role-play games, the most famous of which is Dungeons and Dragons. These games are highly improvisational and rely on - you guessed it - highly dynamic leading and following. Martin describes how game master and players engage in collaborative storytelling thr...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Actor/Director Dan Istrate is originally from Romania and graduated from the University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest. He performed at several theaters in Romania and played the lead role in the Romanian feature film, Double Ecstasy , before moving to the US in 2001. Dan describes the organic flow between leading and following as the essence of great performance, and give...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Dr. Sara Murdock is a specialist on the people and culture side of organizational sustainability, and a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging consultant. She’s worked with solo-preneurs and giant multi-nationals, executives and front-line staff, and everything in between. She shares her keen observations of how people and companies are navigating power and leadership a...