The Four Roles and Secret Skills of Followership

The Roles and Secret Skills of Followership

Leadership gets most of the attention — but followership may be the more important skill to master first. Research from the Corporate Executive Board found that effective leaders deliver 25% better results, retain 39% more of their key personnel, and generate 29% higher engagement from those they lead. Yet only two out of five leaders meet the threshold for being effective or highly effective. And according to Harvard Business Review, 70% of high-potential future leaders have a critical flaw in the skills they will need on day one of their next promotion.

The missing piece, argues Cory Custer — Director of Organizational Development and Learning at Johnsonville Sausage, former US Naval officer, and author of The Lens of Leadership — is followership. Not the flipside of leadership, but its own powerful form of it. Followership is a set of learnable, practicable skills that make you professionally essential to your boss and teammates, enabling the greatness of others while creating opportunities to demonstrate your own leadership abilities.

Drawing on 20 years of experience across the military, academia, business, and politics, this course introduces a practical framework for followership built around four roles — the valet, the Socratic mentor, the chameleon, and the pastor-parent — and four daily skills: be productive, be innovative, be the expert, and be polite. It also covers how to manage your personal brand using the four P's of marketing, and how to recognize and show up for the moments that count.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Explain why followership is the indispensable first form of leadership and describe the business case for developing it at every career stage.
2. Define the four roles of followership — valet, Socratic mentor, chameleon, and pastor-parent — and identify how each applies in their current professional context.
3. Apply the four daily skills of followership — being productive, innovative, expert, and polite — to build a reputation as an indispensable team member.
4. Use the four P's marketing framework (product, price, place, and promotion) to assess and actively manage their personal professional brand.
5. Distinguish between serving and being subservient, and navigate situations involving disagreement, loyalty, and competing priorities with integrity.
6. Recognize moments that count in the workplace and respond with the preparation and presence needed to make a meaningful impact on others.