International Centre for Leadership and Followership

Traditionally, research into leadership focused on the leader as a person. The quest was to identify either the ideal leader in terms of his/her personality or an effective type of behaviour that leaders can then be trained to show. Even recent approaches to leadership such as transformational leadership, an approach presently fashionable among academics and practitioners, focus on the leader. However, these approaches to leadership ignore the critical role of the follower in the leadership processes.

Leadership does not happen in an empty space. Rather, leadership has to be understood as necessarily shaped by the characteristics of followers. Followers have needs and expectations that influence both how they view and evaluate their leader but also how far they willingly follow the leader and engage with organisational goals. At the same time, followers contribute to and shape the leadership process as they respond to the leader's perceived behaviour and shape how the leader then responds. The distinct contribution of the International Centre for Leadership and Followership will be to add to our knowledge in this area and promote this knowledge to practitioners.

We supervise PhD students in the area of leadership, including implicit leadership theories, followership, or more traditional approaches.

Governance
The management body of the centre, which comprises the Centre's director and deputy director and the School's Deputy Dean (Research), draws on the advice of an international advisory group which includes academics and practitioners.