Leading & Following in Community Settings [Podcast episode]

Leadership Educator and Scholar Eric Kaufman shares his observations of leading and following dynamics in a variety of community and volunteer settings, from civic organizations like Kiwanis Clubs to parent-teacher organizations to church governance bodies.

Eric is a professor at Virginia Tech, where he coordinates a graduate certificate in collaborative community leadership and supports an undergraduate minor in leadership and social change. He also has a partial appointment at Virginia Cooperative Extension, and that role has focused his attention on best practices for working with community members to guide educational programming. Eric is a past president of the Association of Leadership Educators, and he is the current chair of the International Leadership Association’s followership member community. Eric has also held significant volunteer roles with his local church and draws upon those experiences to inform his research.

“Leadership is the process of inspiring vision and hope. Followership is the process of aligning behavior with a particular vision or purpose.” “People will put up with bad leadership in a business setting when they won’t in a community setting.” “In some community associations, we have a lot of people who care that it’s successful but they don’t want to be in the leader role.” “Sometimes there’s a default to lead through statements, to tell people, ‘this is where we’re going,’ but leading through questions opens space for conversations and it can surface some answers we may not otherwise come up with.”