Lead & Follow

Lead & Follow

Lead & Follow offers a candid discussion of teamwork, collaboration, and professional development. Host Sharna Fabiano talks with educators, consultants, and professionals to explore the relational dance between leadership and followership, and how to become excellent in both roles.

Episodes

April 20, 2025 46 mins

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Chris Monö is an author and consultant based in Sweden known for his innovative concepts of "natural followership" and "collaborationship." He has spent nearly two decades exploring leadership and followership from a follower’s perspective, and in this episode we discuss several of the powerful ideas in his new book, Why We Follow: Natural Followership in a World Obsessed with Leadership.

If...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Thomas Rieser is the owner of Nou Tango, a tango studio in Berlin, Germany that just celebrated its 20-year anniversary. In this episode, he shares his perspective on how simple yet powerful tango exercises, can be shared outside the world of social dance in supportive group settings to bring healing and joy in surprising and delightful ways.

Over the past 20 years of teaching and organizing, Thomas has develop...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Ashton R. Cooper is an assistant professor of higher education in the School of Education at the University of Cincinnati. In this episode, he shares his research on the participation of White activists in the South in the Black-led Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as well as insights into the lead and follow role switching of White activists from a recent paper titled "Antiracist followership: rethink...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Tango artist Veronica Toumanova shares her insights from 20+ years of learning, dancing, and teaching tango in both roles, how tango social dance communities are evolving in Paris, Europe, and beyond, and what tango has to teach about leading and following possibilities in life and work. 

Veronica has been dancing tango since 2000 and actively teaching and performing since 2007. She has Russian origins, but sta...

Mark as Played
December 19, 2024 15 mins

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the need to get away from digital life and back to in person life, and as beautiful as it is to connect online with folks everywhere, it’s also really important to be in both the same time and the same place with others in a full body way. 

So in 2025 I’m planning to teach more in person tango classes. And for the podcast, I plan to bring you more interviews with tango art...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Dr. Ron Riggio has a uniquely broad and deep perspective on the evolution of followership research over the past two decades. He is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology and former Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College, where the very first followership conference took place back in 2006.

In this episode, Ron shares his thoughts on where the...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Dr. Alain de Sales currently teaches at the Queensland University of Technology’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) in Brisbane, Australia. In this episode, he describes a recent educational project he coordinated for a group of MBA alumni, analyzing patterns of destructive leadership in the 2024 US presidential election cycle.

Back in Season 1 of the podcast, I interviewed Alain on his then and still groundbre...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Leadership Educator and Scholar Eric Kaufman shares his observations of leading and following dynamics in a variety of community and volunteer settings, from civic organizations like Kiwanis Clubs to parent-teacher organizations to church governance bodies.

Eric is a professor at Virginia Tech, where he coordinates a graduate certificate in collaborative community leadership and supports an undergradu...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Dr. Jane Bentley is a percussionist and drum circle facilitator based in Glasgow, Scotland, specializing in rhythm, improvisation, group dynamics and communication skills. She completed a Ph.D on drum circle improvisation and facilitation, highlighting the effects of group music making on human wellbeing, and revealing its fascinating leadership and followership dynamics. Jane’s work as a facilitator has broke...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

 Eric McDermott shares a framework he developed through his decades of professional experience called the 4 Tiers of Followership (or the 4 Tiers of Help).  

By day, Eric is an equity partner at a financial services firm with more than 60,000 clients. But behind the suit, in his other company, Eric was named "Best Business Influencer of the Year" winning two Stevies (the Oscars of the busine...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Paul McGachey shares his theoretical research on Ira Chaleff's Courageous Follower model plus lots of terrific examples from his own professional work demonstrating what it takes to follow courageously at the higher levels of an organization, whether that's  in the US military or in the business sector. Paul is a scholar-practitioner with 18 years of experience in the United States military and is cu...

Mark as Played
June 3, 2024 4 mins

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Your lead and follow coaching tip for today is Focus your email.

I recently received an auto-responder email message from a colleague that read, and I’m not kidding about this, QUOTE “I’m out of the office this week, and your message will be deleted. If you’d like a response, please re-send your message after next Monday when I return.” UNQUOTE

Your message will be deleted. 

This is probably the most extreme exam...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Lindsay Burr shares the tools of Polarity ThinkingTM as a way to understand, identify, and refine leadership and followership dynamics in any group or organization. Lindsay is CEO of the Yarbrough Group and based in Washington, DC. Her career has focused on helping people clearly see and then navigate the systems that they're in. She has worked in international political spaces and in US policy and electi...

Mark as Played
May 21, 2024 3 mins

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Your lead and follow coaching tip for today is Visual focus. 

In most Western contexts, eye contact signals to the other person that you are paying attention to them. A lack of eye contact can signal the opposite: disconnection, dismissal, or disinterest. Just think about the last time you tried to share information or ask a question of someone who was looking at their screen, at their phone, or out the window....

Mark as Played
May 14, 2024 4 mins

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Your lead and follow coaching tip for today is Take turns. 

One summer I attended a large afternoon bbq, and a person I’d just met walked over and asked me about my work. Perfectly normal, right? But then he interrupted me before I could finish, and asked me another question. So, I started answering the new question, and then he interrupted again. Another question. Finally, I had to not answer at all and instea...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Actor/Director Dan Istrate shares his thoughts on presence, connection, and social leading and following.  Dan grew up in Romania and has lived for the past 25 years in the United States. He’s had thousands of both painful and hilarious experiences of language and culture translation and mis-translation, working on both stage and screen in a wide variety of creative collaborations.

Socially, his way of being se...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Yulia Tolstikov-Mast, Ph.D.  shares the concept of a global follower and especially of global followership as a force of power that can and does influence the far-reaching decisions of global leaders. Yulia is a global leadership and followership expert, an award-winning international leadership scholar, and an educator. Her scholarship and training focus on the internalization of leadership and followership e...

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Dr. Kyle Payne, a strategic talent development leader based in Chicago, describes his recent study exploring how professional engineers navigate ethical dilemmas. 

Kyle has fifteen years of experience driving process improvement and behavior change through training, coaching, and consulting. In his research, he focuses on unethical behavior at work and examines the behaviors of “ethical followers” who resist un...

Mark as Played
February 24, 2024 8 mins

Send Fan Mail by Text!

Hi Everyone, this is Sharna. I’ve spent the beginning of the year in a resting phase with the podcast, letting the new season slowly take shape in my mind. New episodes are coming soon, in early March, and I’m hoping this little preview will give you a sense of how I’m thinking about season 3 as a collection of conversations.

*
Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden
The Ezra Klein Show
...

Mark as Played

Send Fan Mail by Text!

In this short, end-of year episode, host Sharna Fabiano reflects on season 2 and shares three  compelling lead and follow ideas to try out in your own life and work in 2024. Please send feedback on Season 2 along with suggestions for Season 3 directly to Sharna at sharna@sharnafabiano.com.

Special thanks to Glover Gill for providing our music.

Lead & Follow, by Sharna Fabiano
https://...

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    On Purpose with Jay Shetty

    I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

    The Bobby Bones Show

    Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.