Skip to main content

The Benefits Of When Everyone Leads


It’s only January and the new book, When Everyone Leads, could likely be my pick for the best new leadership book of 2023. It’s that good. There’s still nearly a whole year ahead of us so we’ll see what other books debut. In the meantime, add this book to your must-read list. 

You’ll learn that:

  • Leadership is an activity, not a position.
  • Leadership is mobilizing others to make progress on the most important challenges.
  • Leadership is interactive, risky and experimental.
  • Leadership comes in moments.
  • Leadership is always about change. 

When Everyone Leads, by Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride, presents a revolutionary approach to leadership; not based on position or authority, but an activity that anybody can undertake by learning to spot opportunities for improvement and taking the initiative to engage others. 

“It can be unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but in a culture where everyone leads, organizations start to make progress on their most difficult problems,” explain the authors. 

As founder and chief leadership development officer at the Kansas Leadership Center, respectively, O’Malley and Fabris McBride have led thousands of people through programs to help them engage in the act of leadership. They have seen remarkable results with people from all walks of life, but they’re also keenly aware of the obstacles that tend to come up. In When Everyone Leads, they delve into: 

  • Identifying the Gap: how to pinpoint the area where your organization needs to improve, the gap between where you are and where you want to be;
  • Overcoming Barriers to Progress: how to circumvent common pitfalls that impede growth, including value clashes within a team and resistance to changing the status quo;
  • Starting With You: how to empower yourself to take the first steps towards leadership;
  • Using the Heat: getting your team to the productive zone between avoidance of the tough challenges (heat too low) and clashes over how to solve them (heat too high);
  • Inviting Everyone to Lead: specific steps to take, questions to ask, and methods of thinking that you can use to engage in the act of leadership, and allow your peers to do the same. 

Full of specific examples of challenges and solutions from fields as diverse as nonprofits, school boards, healthcare, and the corporate world, When Everyone Leads, offers a proven, actionable approach for any company, organization, or community to navigate through its most pressing challenges. 

The book is fast paced and highly readable, with a bold design including graphics, end-of-chapter Q&A’s, and bite-size content presentation for easy reading and comprehension. You’ll discover what you learn from the book is relatable and directly applicable.

Julia Fabris McBride and Ed O'Malley

Today, the authors share these insights with us: 

Question: Why did you decide to write the book? 

The Authors: Our hope in writing this book is to build on a movement we’ve already started. A movement that inspires more people to practice leadership where they can and when they can. We want to spread our counterculture leadership ideas far beyond the people we can reach through our in-person and Zoom-base programs. Because our world needs more people to embrace the ideas in this book and to step up and start leading. 

The new model leadership we talk about in When Everyone Leads is a match for our turbulent times. It is hopeful and forward-looking. We know through our experience working with hundreds of companies, organizations, and communities that what you’ll discover in our book is an antidote for polarization, stagnation, and divisiveness. Our model works because it places the challenge, not the person, at the center. 

It's pretty counterculture of us to declare, as we do in the book, that even if you are the CEO (or the governor, prime minister, or president) with today’s toughest challenges, your authority alone will never be enough to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Another way to put that is no matter who we elect (or appoint, or hire) their brilliance will never be enough to solve our most pressing problems. Progress on what matters most requires those in authority to do their part, but their part alone is insufficient. 

Leadership position and leadership team are outdated terms from a model that no longer works. Think eliminating poverty, stopping climate change, achieving racial equity, or building the innovative organizational culture your company needs to survive. Authority is not enough to solve those daunting challenges. (Don’t get us wrong. Our institutions need structure and processes, and people in authority positions to keep it all running. Society would fall apart without that. Authority is necessary. It’s just not sufficient.) 

We need everyone ­to have understand that leadership is an activity. It is not a role. It’s a thing we do. We need everyone to know that leadership is mobilizing others to make progress on complex and entrenched challenges, and that each of us has a responsibility to find our moments to lead. 

That’s why we wrote this book.

Question: Tell us more about your reader-engaging approach in book presentation -- combination of Q&As, letters, illustrations, conversational style. 

The Authors: If we want everyone to lead, we needed a book that everyone would want to read. 

We love that you think it’s engaging in its presentation. That’s exactly what we were going for. When Everyone Leads is as much for avid readers as it is for people who read just one book a year. It’s a business book that is accessible to non-businesspeople. It’s a quick read that a busy executive can digest in an evening. It’s for the activist who doesn’t have time to read. It’s for visual learners who almost never read. The design – by Stauber Design Studio – is intended to draw you in and pull you along quickly. The short chapters with a semi-predictable rhythm to them make it easy to dip in and out. 

We want teams and groups to read and discuss this book together and we know from experience with Ed’s first book that Pat Byrnes’ cartoons are great conversation starters. He draws for the New Yorker, so that gives you an idea of the kind of compelling images we were going for.   

Ed, teacher, CEO, college president, city manager, school board member) and based on stories we’ve heard in our leadership development programs over the last 15 years. We share our own stories of leadership success and failures. 

Our bullet-pointed lists of tips and traps make it easy to begin applying the ideas in the book right away. That’s our big goal. Get as many people as possible to pick up the book, thumb through and think, “This book is for me.” 

Question: How has the Kansas Leadership Center influenced your book? 

The Authors: We launched the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) in 2007 with funding from a foundation whose board members understood that the quality and quantity of leadership is key to the prosperity, health, and success of organizations, companies, and communities. Over the last 15 years worked with over 15,000 people using the ideas in this book. Our research and experience with partners throughout our state and around the world, show that the ideas in this book work to help people make more progress on what they care about most. 

Question: What's your book's most important takeaway for readers? 

The Authors: We want readers to know that leadership is not about position or authority. It’s not about having the top job or the ability to command huge audiences. 

Leadership is engaging others to solve daunting challenges and achieve big aspirations. And leadership is for everyone. That’s a powerful and energizing idea: Anyone can lead, anytime anywhere. We all face challenges in our professional lives, in our communities, in our personal lives and in our families. They can seem insolvable, beyond our ability to even see what needs to be done. But they are not. 

Because leadership is an activity. It’s small actions taken in moments of opportunity. Once you’ve read our book, you’ll be able to see more of those moments. The blinders will come off and the barriers will start to fall away. You’ll see more moments and you’ll be able to seize the opportunity in those moments. And, most importantly, you can help others see those opportunities too. 

Today’s toughest challenges demand a new approach to leadership. 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Effective Listening: Do's And Don'ts

Here are some great tips from Michelle Tillis Lederman's book, The 11 Laws of Likability .  They are all about: what to do and what not to do to be a leader who's an effective listener : Do : Maintain eye contact Limit your talking Focus on the speaker Ask questions Manage your emotions Listen with your eyes and ears Listen for ideas and opportunities Remain open to the conversation Confirm understanding, paraphrase Give nonverbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile) Ignore distractions Don't : Interrupt Show signs of impatience Judge or argue mentally Multitask during a conversation Project your ideas Think about what to say next Have expectations or preconceived ideas Become defensive or assume you are being attacked Use condescending, aggressive, or closed body language Listen with biases or closed to new ideas Jump to conclusions or finish someone's sentences

How To Lead An Empowered Workforce

The new book, The Empathy Advantage , speaks to anyone with responsibility for recruiting, engaging, leading and retaining the next generation of workers – a workforce shaped by the pandemic that fundamentally transformed the relationship between individuals and organizations.   Not surprising, managers at every level are struggling to adapt to this new dynamic, balancing both employee satisfaction and corporate productivity. Quiet Quitting, Great Resignation, and Great Reset have all become code words to describe the trendlines that have been building for years. Accelerated change driven by exponentially advancing technologies have made steep learning curves part of every day work.   Fortunately, book authors Heather C. McGowan and Chris Shipley , unpack the five interlocking trends that placed agency in the hands of workers:   The Great Resignation The Great Refusal The Great Reshuffle The Great Retirement The Great Relocation   …collectively delivering the Gr

The Four Components That Create Customer Satisfaction

Great customer service tips from author Micah Solomon's new book, High-tech, High-touch Customer Service : You provide value when you deliver the four components that reliably create customer satisfaction : A perfect product or service Delivered in a caring, friendly manner On time (as defined by the customer) With the backing of an effective problem-resolution process Micah has been named by the Financial Post as “a new guru of customer service excellence.” He is a keynote speaker and consultant on customer service issues, the customer experience, and company culture.  He previously coauthored the bestselling Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit .      

How Leaders Use Four Workarounds To Tackle Complex Problems

  “Workarounds are effective, versatile, and accessible methods for tackling complex problems,” shares the author of the new book, The Four Workarounds . “They are a creative, flexible, imperfection-loving, problem-solving approach. A method that ignores or even challenges conventions on how, and by whom a problem is meant to be solved.”   In Part 1 of this fascinating and instructional book, author and Oxford University professor, Paulo Savaget , explains what workarounds are and how to come up with them. And, then in Part 2, he digs into how to cultivate a workaround attitude and mindset, including how to reflect on the ways you typically see, judge, and approach obstacles.   “I also show you how you can systematically conceive workarounds to your problems and how your workplace can become more workaround friendly,” adds Savaget.   You’ll read intriguing and revealing stories of how some of the largest and scrappiest companies and organizations used one or more of the four workaround

How To Use The MOVE Framework To Be A More Effective Leader

  In their new book, Real-Time Leadership , leadership coaches David Noble and Carol Kauffman teach leaders how to use their unique MOVE framework to help leaders adjust their reflexive reactions and optimize their responses to any situation – including unexpected and complex leadership challenges.   The MOVE framework includes these four key elements :   M : Be Mindfully Alert . Attune yourself to the three essential dimensions of leadership: what you want or need to achieve, who you want to be as a leader, and how to help unlock others’ potential.   O : Generate Options . Identify at least four pathways forward by making decisions as each challenge requires, from slow and pensive, to whip fast.   V : Validate Your Vantage Point . Choose the best reality-based point of view – even if it wasn’t your own or initial thought. Leaders can be prone to missteps if they’re unclear on their perspective.   E : Engage and Effect Change . Do this first as an individual, then at scale – or all

Good Sample Business Principles

I really like these 10 guiding business principles that San Antonio, TX headquartered insurance company  USAA  lives by: Exceed customer expectations Live the Golden Rule (treat others with courtesy and respect) Be a leader Participate and contribute Pursue excellence Work as a team Share knowledge Keep it simple (make it easy for customers to do business with us and for us to work together) Listen and communicate Have fun Too many companies don't make it simple for their customers to do business with them.  Is it easy for your customers to: Buy from you? Make returns? Get pricing and terms? Receive timely responses to their e-mails? Quickly get answers when phoning your company? You can find more examples of companies with impressive guiding principles in the book, 1001 Ways To Energize Employees .

6 Ways To Seek Feedback To Improve Your Performance In The Workplace

Getting feedback is an important way to improve performance at work. But sometimes, it can be hard to seek out, and even harder to hear.  “Feedback is all around you. Your job is to find it, both through asking directly and observing it,” says David L. Van Rooy, author of the new book,  Trajectory: 7 Career Strategies to Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be . As today's guest post, Van Rooy offers these  six tips for how to get the feedback you need to improve performance at work . Guest Post By David L. Van Rooy 1.       Don’t forget to as k :  One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming things are going perfectly (until they make a catastrophic mistake). By not asking, you’re missing out on opportunities for deep feedback: the difficult, critical feedback that gives you constructive ways to improve. 2.       Make sure you listen :  Remember, getting feedback is about improving your performance, not turning it into a “you versus the

Seven Ways To Delight Your Customers

If you want to delight your customers, then the book by  Steve Curtin ,  Delight Your Customers -- 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary , is a must-read for you and your employees. The book explains the  seven ways  for you and your employees to demonstrate  exceptional customer service : Express genuine interest Offer sincere and specific compliments Share unique knowledge Convey authentic enthusiasm Use appropriate humor Provide pleasant surprises Deliver service heroics "Exceptional customer service typically costs no more to deliver than poor customer service," explains Curtin. For example: How much does it cost to express genuine interest in customers or to anticipate their needs? Does it cost more to display a sense of urgency or to pay attention to detail? Do you pay your employees more to smile, to make eye contact, or to add energy to their voices? Curtin reminds readers that: Customers don't establish relationships with bus

When Leaders Should Coach And When To Counsel

A good manager is both a  coach  and a  counselor .  Generally, coaching should precede counseling. As a coach ,   a manager: identifies an employee's need for instruction and direction and this need is usually directly related to his or her performance or career goals. Coaching is collaborative. It relies on mutual, progressive goal-setting, personal feedback, and an ongoing, supportive relationship. You coach to help retain employees and to show you care about your employees as individuals. It's best to coach when a new procedure is introduced, a job is changed, and/or a skill gap is identified. As a counselor , a manager first identifies a problem that interferes with an employee's work performance and then helps the employee to define specifically what behavior he or she needs to change in order to improve his or her performance or resolve a problem. So, the difference between coach and counselor is subtle, but important. And, as Sharon Armstrong further shares in her b

How Women In Corporate Leadership Are Rewriting The Rules For Success

  “We are living through a moment in history when the old definitions of success and what it takes to lead are giving way to something that is altogether more collaborative and more inclusive,” says Jenna C. Fisher , author of the new book, To The Top: How Women In Corporate Leadership Are Rewriting The Rules For Success .  “We are seeing a demand for leaders who cultivate a kind of compassionate command,” adds Fisher.  In her book, Fisher outlines how collectively we can permanently build a more inclusive way of working into corporate culture to launch more women to the highest echelons of business. Her approach puts the onus on organizations, not on the individual, to change and keep women on a sustained path to success.  In the United States, women account for 51% of the population and 70% of high school valedictorians. Yet, only 9% of the largest 100 companies in the S&P500 index are led by women, shares Fisher.  Combining cutting-edge research with the stories of power