Why We Follow and Why Sometimes We Do not
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- ISBN 9781049808406
- Weight: 1g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 22 Sep 2026
- Publisher: University of Toronto Press
- Publication City/Country: CA
- Product Form: Hardback
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This groundbreaking book investigates the human tendency to follow, as well as the occasional defiance of this norm. This is the first work to focus not on why people with power and authority behave as they do, but on why people without respond as they do.
Leadership is a relationship. There is no leader without at least one follower. Still, notwithstanding their essential importance – especially to leaders – followers are largely ignored. This book is a corrective: followers are placed in the foreground, and leaders in the background.
First, Barbara Kellerman focuses on the rewards and punishments that prompt us to go along with the leader and conform to the group. Next, she highlights what motivates some individuals some of the time to do the opposite. Finally, she demonstrates that the human condition is submission: obedience is typical, while resistance is atypical. Drawing upon the latest research in business, government, psychology, philosophy, religion, education, and the sciences, Kellerman’s accessible inquiry will be of interest to readers across disciplines and practices.
This latest publication by globally renowned expert Barbara Kellerman is a vital and fresh contribution to the leadership field. Moreover, this book about followers and followership is a critical companion to any book about leaders and leadership.
Barbara Kellerman was founding executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a member of the Harvard faculty for over twenty years. She is currently a Center fellow. She is an author and editor of more than twenty books on leadership and followership including Bad Leadership, Followership, The End of Leadership, Professionalizing Leadership, and Leadership from Bad to Worse. She has also published pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Harvard Business Review.
