How Do We Talk About Followership? Uncovering Followership Discourse(s) through World Café

Abstract

This paper aims to uncover emerging followership discourses and themes. Additionally, this study examines how current and historic trends have shaped the direction of followership research and studies. The research utilizes the World Café approach in collecting data from participants of three professional conferences: the Global Followership Conference, the Association of Leadership Educators conference, and the International Leadership Association global conference. Artifacts from the sessions were analyzed thematically by manual sorting. The findings reveal three followership discourses — Maintaining, Reframing, and Transforming discourses. Furthermore, the study highlights the influence of social media, the COVID-19 pandemic, power relations, etc. on followership discourses. The fluid and dynamic nature of World Café increases the risk of different interpretations and misconstruals of participants’ contributions. Further research is needed to confirm the findings and advance the understanding of followership discourses. This paper will be beneficial to scholars and practitioners who are seeking understanding on how to build, recognize and appreciate a followership culture within their environment, including management development and related educational programs. This study adopts the World Café approach, an unconventional qualitative data collection method for followership research and studies, highlighting its potential within participatory research. Additionally, the research presents a novel effort to explore the influence of historical and current trends in followership discourses.