When Everyone Leads the Toughest Challenges Get Seen and Solved

When Everyone Leads The Toughest Challenges Can Be Seen and Solved

LEADERSHIP is an action, not a position. Leaders can come from anywhere. Anyone can step up and take responsibility. Leadership begins by taking responsibility for the gap between what is and what should be.

Ed O’Malley and Julia McBride believe that anyone can lead, not by when a leader, but by exercise leadership. and When Everyone Leads, our difficult challenges can be seen and solved. We need diversity of thought that can come from anywhere. We must choose leadership over comfort.

When the authorities—the people in the highest jobs—empower others to lead, their own jobs become easier. If everyone—the people without authority—started to lead, their work would be more rewarding.

The first step in leading change is recognition The Gap. “Leadership always begins with dissatisfaction. No one exercises leadership unless they are unhappy with the current reality.” This means recognizing concerns and facing the difficult choices that need to be made in order to act. in the direction of our dreams.

Our research shows that closing The Gap requires leadership from the many, not the few. Real progress on the toughest challenges facing your company or community requires more people looking across The Gap, voicing concerns and aspirations, balancing pragmatism and idealism.

In leading any change, you will encounter obstacles. If you don’t understand where they’re coming from and talk about it, you’re making things difficult. In your efforts to close The Gap, the following five obstacles are the most common:

Navigating Loss. Change requires loss, and we don’t like that.
Change the Values. When progress stops, there may be a conflict of values that you are not aware of.
Resist the Lure of a Quick Fix. Avoid band-aids.
You Need More Than Authority (Leadership from the many, not the few.)
Risk Management. “Leadership is an activity that involves motivating people to abandon habits and behaviors that no longer serve them.”

Once you recognize and recognize The Gap, you’ll make more progress if you do these five things:

Allow Yourself to Lead. It’s a choice. Mainly from where you are. “Leadership is a self-authorizing activity. No one else can let you lead. Other people can tell you they want you to lead. They can put you in what they call a ‘leadership position’ (we call it position of authority).But only you can make the conscious decision to try to exercise leadership.
Start Your Leadership Challenge. “Focusing on a common leadership challenge allows everyone to see and take their chances to lead.”
Start Where You Have Influence. “No one is leading anywhere, so we need everyone to be leading everywhere. Big changes happen because enough people, in different fields, are leading where they have influence.”
Start Your Part of the Chaos. “Whenever someone truly asks themselves ‘What is my part in this mess?’—and pauses long enough to hear the answer—they create the possibility of their own leadership, gather a variable that they controllable. Progress is usually imminent. “
Start Engaging Others. Don’t try to go it alone. “Because there are many ways to look at a problem or challenge, engaging others—especially those with different perspectives and similar values—illuminates the situation.”

Remember, if there’s no warmth—if people don’t feel comfortable—there’s no motivation to engage and change. No one acts when the heat of a situation is too low. You have to handle the heat. There should be enough warmth for people to change but not so much that they engage in counterproductive behavior. Overheat and a flight, fight or freeze response begins. The right amount of warmth fosters curiosity and learning.

The authors attempt to share lessons from their specific work with the Kansas Leadership Center to encourage engagement for change leadership on difficult issues. While some declarative statements miss the nuances of leadership, their approach is accurate. If you are concerned about development and leadership, then you will be motivated to take action after reading the examples and principles found in When Everyone Leads.

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