On Followership

Followers are an essential but underrepresented part of leadership. Without a strong group of followers, leaders cannot possibly be successful. Followers can, and often do, think independently and critically, and are active workers. They do not simply wait to be told what to do. level followers courageous Instead, there are various followership styles. At the most exemplary provide are fully relationship constructive, competent with leaders although not partners wherein in an they always positive, organization. are able feedback. to They openly Effective maintain disagree leaders a and work with followers, not above them, and empower them to take risks. Organizations should maintain a culture that recognizes the value that followers bring to achieving the overall goals of the organization. This literature review presents several models and theories that focus on followership and offers recommendations to organizations, leaders, and followers that assist stakeholders at all levels of an organization in sustaining a culture of followership

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

On Followership

Followers are an essential but underrepresented part of leadership. Without a strong group of followers, leaders cannot possibly be successful. Followers can, and often do, think independently and critically, and are active workers. They do not simply wait to be told what to do. level followers courageous Instead, there are various followership styles. At the most exemplary provide are fully relationship constructive, competent with leaders although not partners wherein in an they always positive, organization. are able feedback. to They openly Effective maintain disagree leaders a and work with followers, not above them, and empower them to take risks. Organizations should maintain a culture that recognizes the value that followers bring to achieving the overall goals of the organization. This literature review presents several models and theories that focus on followership and offers recommendations to organizations, leaders, and followers that assist stakeholders at all levels of an organization in sustaining a culture of followership