Seminar: The Hive Followership Framework (HF2): An Innovative Approach to Supporting the Level 5 Leader

December 3, 2025

Seminar: The Hive Followership Framework (HF2): An Innovative Approach to Supporting the Level 5 Leader

Cheryl A. Harris | 2020

Abstract

Followers and leaders have the same DNA, but how they define and embrace their roles shapes and differentiates their behaviors that establishes the synergy required to serve as partners and official stewards within the organization. Subject matter experts are partial to debating and researching the topic of leadership with an occasional honorable mention of followership in the context of subordinate responsibilities. Followers are more than the second-class citizens relegated to doing the work behind the scene. They are vibrant, enthusiastic, intelligent, and vested in the future direction of the organization with the same passion and dedication as their leaders. Prudent superiors must learn how to respect and celebrate followership by giving followers a voice and seat at the table with a vote on critical initiatives the future direction of the organization. Jim Collins’s seminal work on the level 5 leadership hierarchy and the sequential and progressive pyramid of leadership skillsets¹ is the motivation for creating a complementary followership framework. Robert Kelley², Ira Chaleff³ and Barbara Kellerman⁴ are the subject matter experts on followership that characterized the behaviors of followers in the context of their leaders.

The Hive Followership Framework (HF2): An Innovative Approach to Supporting the Level 5 Leader seminar is an interactive forum for practitioners to catapult the topic of followership into the spotlight. Exploring the behaviors between followers in their network is the basis for the introduction and explanation of a new followership framework. The HF2 uses the analogy of a honeybee hive to illustrate how followers master multiple roles that are situationally dependent on varying stimuli within the environment. Followers exhibit autonomy and flexibility when change is on the horizon or happens extemporaneously. To understand the synergy between leadership and followership, subject matter experts must study both disciplines side by side with equal emphasis on the importance of partnerships, trust and enduring relationships.

¹Jim Collins’s book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t.

²Robert Kelley’s book The Power of Followership.

³Ira Chaleff’s book Courageous Follower: Standing Up To & For Our Leaders.

⁴Barbara Kellerman’s book Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders.

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