Leadership education often emphasizes authority, visibility, and position. At IWU, students are learning that influence is most often exercised through faithful followership. Across classrooms and learning environments, students examine how leadership and followership function together. They explore how teams succeed, how organizations fail, and how courage, humility, and discernment shape outcomes long before someone holds a title.
At IWU, followership is taught as an active, biblically grounded practice rather than a secondary role.
Scripture frames the Christian life around following Christ, beginning with obedience and trust. Students study examples from Scripture and contemporary organizations, learning that leadership is strengthened, not diminished, by faithful followership.
“Following Christ is the starting point for understanding influence,” said Mark Rennaker, Ph.D., chair of the Division of Leadership and Followership Studies. “Leadership and followership are responsibilities we all share.”
Faculty at IWU design learning experiences that place students at the center of the conversation. In leadership and organizational studies courses, students analyze real-world scenarios, engage current research, and apply principles of followership in practical settings.
Rennaker and colleague Michael Linville, Ph.D., professor of leadership and followership studies at IWU, work together to guide students through these conversations, helping them connect scholarship to lived experience. As students engaged the field more deeply, faculty recognized the lack of undergraduate-level resources that reflected both theory and practice. In response, they developed teaching frameworks shaped directly by classroom dialogue and student learning.
Those resources now help students evaluate organizational culture, ethical decision-making, and team dynamics, equipping them to contribute meaningfully in a wide range of professional and ministry settings.
Research at IWU is closely connected to teaching and learning. Students engage research that examines how leaders and followers influence one another in real organizations, with emphasis on trust, resilience, adaptability, and communication.
Rennaker and Linville’s scholarship informs this work, but the focus remains on application. Through case studies, internships, group projects, and leadership experiences, students practice using research-based insights to navigate real leadership systems.
“Students begin to see that influence is not about title,” Rennaker said. “It is about responsibility, courage, and service, modeled after the life of Christ.”
One of the most important qualities students learn is courage. That includes knowing when to question, challenge, or refuse an unethical directive.
Students examine historical and contemporary examples where follower silence led to harm and where principled voices prevented failure. These discussions reinforce the idea that healthy organizations depend on followers who are willing to speak up and leaders who are willing to listen.
Active engagement, collaboration, critical thinking, and accountability are emphasized as essential practices for both followers and leaders.
As interest in followership grows nationally, IWU remains focused on student formation. Graduates leave prepared to lead when called upon and to follow with integrity when others are entrusted with authority.
“Even leaders are followers,” Linville noted. “What matters is whether we follow with wisdom, humility, and faithfulness.”
By centering faith, character, and service, IWU equips students to influence organizations and communities not through position alone, but through Christ-centered conviction and purposeful action.
Explore how IWU’s leadership programs uniquely integrate followership, preparing you to lead effectively within dynamic organizations and teams.
