Lead & Follow

Send Fan Mail by Text! Reflecting on his long career working with with non-profits, Dr. Tom Klaus shares the important difference between “buy-in” and true ownership, how content experts and context experts must lead and follow one another, and what 7th graders taught him about relational trust.  We explore his approach to collective change leadership, examine why leaders must occasionally (or oft...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Brian Rook shares some compelling examples of professional development programs he's developed that focus specifically on followership, and that have achieved wild success in multiple industries. As Assistant VP of Training at Lincoln Financial Group in Fort Wayne,  Brian is responsible for the continuous development of professionals in advisor and securities operations...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Tara Laidlaw has worked at the intersection of formal and informal education for nearly 15 years, serving as a program manager, instructional designer, frontline facilitator, and teacher trainer for organizations from coast to coast. Her specialty is place-based education, and she has used farms, forests, meadows, and mountains as classrooms for learners of all ages. We expl...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I talk with coach and educator Janice Shack-Marquez about communication skills, Fierce Conversations, and what she learned over her 30-year career at the Federal Reserve, helping new managers in particular learn how to both lead and follow in all directions: up, down, sideways and diagonally! Our conversation includes some great insights about the power of giving and receivi...

Send Fan Mail by Text! I talk with Dr. Lewis Steinhoff, the Director of the Nuclear Weapon Acquisition Professional (NWAP) Certification Program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). We explore how a leader's power and influence are not entirely guaranteed based on title or position, but rather that leaders are to a large extent constrained by wha...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Dr. Alain de Sales shares his research on how courageous followers can collapse patterns of destructive leadership. He surfaces destructive episodes using the toxic triangle framework made up of leaders, susceptible followers and context. Through compelling stories and examples, he shows how specific, methodical, and sequential acts of courageous followership can interrupt h...

Send Fan Mail by Text! My neighbor, chemical engineer Ryan Moody, shares her insights on followership in the course of her work building and maintaining hydrogen fuel cell stations for electric vehicles in southern California. We also chat about how powerful it can be to choose to listen and take the follower position in social justice work and even on vacation with your significant other!  “If it...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Jonathan shares insights from the world of martial arts that help us navigate non-physical conflict. Our conversation explores the receiving position in fighting techniques, and how that position corresponds in some ways to the follower role in life and work. We also challenge the assumption that the follower role is "weak," and  propose an unexpected definition of...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Amy Lombardo is a coach and a teacher of coaches who specializes in the area of human potential. Amy is the author of the book Brilliance and the founder of the Brilliance Academy for Personal Transformation and Social Change in Los Angeles. She shares how the coaching relationship itself teaches us about equitable leading and following and opens an emergent field of possibi...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Ruth Sims is a long-time higher education administrator who is now conducting her own PhD research on the topic of followership at the University of South Australia Business School. She brings her experiences on the organizational side of academia to life in a way that makes it clear how influential good followership is and how much it matters to our collective success. She...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Artists Laurie Ann Greenberg and Blaise Barshaw in Spokane, Washington talk about about how they go back and forth when they collaborate on projects together, especially on their current project, the Camp Taps Beer Trailer, and about how getting an initial "no" might be just one of many steps in the co-creative dance. They also share charming and practical insights...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Tilla Foljanty, a stage manager in Bonn, Germany, shares her observations about role-switching between leading and following in the context of professional opera productions. She offers keen observations about when and how to embody each role, and shares her love of the following role in particular.  “Be there and be ready to receive whatever information is put in front of y...

Send Fan Mail by Text! Valeria Solomonoff shares her experience of leading and following as a professional tango dancer and within her teaching relationships with her tango students in New York City. This is a passionate and personal interview of shared stories and provocative questions around the powerful polarities of masculinity/femininity and leading/following. “The kind of preparation for the...