Followership is an emerging concept based on human factors science. It describes a set of skills and behaviours that help improve team performance. An effective leader creates vision, sets direction and enables a culture in which others can thrive and work together to deliver the goals. Like leadership, good followership is increasingly being recognized as an important component for high performance. Good followership is based on good communication and ‘upward influencing’ (Willson 2012). This article discusses the concept and provides scenarios to illustrate examples of good and poor followership, and how they affect care.