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PREFACE The Premise and the Promise

The premise of Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership: How to Make a Difference Regardless of Your Title, Role, or Authority is quite simple: leadership is a learnable set of actions and behaviors that is available to everyone. In the pages that follow, we make the case that leadership is not about rank, position, or authority, and we will provide data to support this claim. We'll also share examples of individuals who, as a result of engaging in practices of exemplary leadership, have guided others in making extraordinary things happen in their organizations and communities.

Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership is about what individuals do to effect change and improvement. It is about the behaviors and actions individuals use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, division into unity, and risks into rewards. It's about exercising leadership that contributes to creating an environment in which people can work together to turn perplexing problems and challenging opportunities into remarkable successes.

All too often, when leadership is discussed within workplaces and communities, attention is given primarily to those appointed or elected to positions of authority. While leaders with titles certainly deserve credit for what they do, they are not the only people who matter. In fact, we would argue that there are just as many, probably even more, leaders without titles who contribute to collective achievements and well-being. Workplace and community engagement are not just a function of what formal leaders do; they are also related to how all leaders in organizations behave.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point as it spread across the globe, overwhelming healthcare systems, shutting down a significant number of commerce and educational systems, and totally disrupting the normal way of life for effectively every person on the planet. It has been an unprecedented crisis like no other experienced in our lifetime. While there are—and have to be—global, national, regional, state, and local coordinated efforts to address the pandemic, it is also the many small acts of leadership among doctors, nurses, first responders, teachers, parents, students, volunteers, and other concerned citizens that make a difference. They create novel ways to treat the sick, care for the vulnerable, deal with shortages, produce personal protective equipment, recognize heroes, and even bring a bit of joy to an otherwise tragic and depressing situation.

Another case in point about how tragedy and adversity create opportunities for people to step up and lead, and that leadership arises as much, if not more so, from the bottom up as it does from the top down, is the response to the death of George Floyd while in police custody. His death was the tipping point in long-standing tensions around matters of racial and social justice and police treatment of people of color. Within a day of the event, protests began, first in Minneapolis, where the incident occurred, and then across the United States and in major cities around the world. These were mostly decentralized actions initiated largely by young people of highly diverse backgrounds who had no formal titles or positions. They captured the attention of governments, businesses, and ordinary citizens and supercharged calls for more diversity, equity, and inclusion in every institution.

There continues to be no shortage of challenges facing individuals, organizations, and communities, and no limits to the opportunities and needs for people to lead. We wrote this book to help you prepare to become the best leader you can be and take advantage of the chances you have to make this world a little bit better place than you find it.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is for and about people who do not have titles, like supervisor, manager, executive, chief, head, director, captain, boss, and the like, or some formal authority over other people. It's intended for front-line workers, new hires, individual contributors, salespeople, analysts, researchers, consultants, professionals, community activists, volunteers, project leads, scientists, engineers, administrators, artists, athletes, attorneys, programmers, coaches, teachers, parents, and all the others who lead without the benefit of hierarchical position or rank. The book aims to help people—no matter their role—strengthen their capacity to make extraordinary things happen.

We also wrote this book to uplift your spirits. We will show you how you can be effective at leading without any formal authority. Leadership matters from wherever you do it. We have learned from our research—which is discussed in each chapter—that people who aren't managers or executives are far more capable of developing themselves as leaders and exercising leadership than tradition or myth has ever assumed possible.

Managers, executives, and leadership developers will benefit, as well, from reading this book. They will find here example after example of people who have made extraordinary things happen without having the advantage of title or positional power. We hope that it will reinforce the need for them to provide leadership development opportunities to everyone in their organization—and much sooner in people's careers than they typically do. We know that the best leaders are the best learners, and learning leadership is best begun before people join the workforce or take on formal or official organizational responsibilities.

As you will see from the scores of examples in this book, the principles apply regardless of the nature of your organization, and they are not dependent upon any particular demographic characteristic (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, function, nationality, etc.) or personality variable. The focus is on the behaviors and actions of what people do when they are exercising exemplary leadership.

Research-Based Practices

The principles and practices described in Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership are based solidly on quantitative and qualitative research. The book has its origins in a study we began in 1983. We wanted to know what people did when they were at their “personal best” in leading others. People see their individual leadership standards of excellence in these experiences. We started with an assumption that to discover best practices we did not have to interview and survey star performers, select celebrities, or people “at the top.” Instead, we assumed that by asking people at all levels and across a broad array of organizational settings to describe extraordinary experiences, we would be able to find and identify patterns of success. And we did.

The results of our initial investigation—and of the ongoing research we have conducted for nearly four decades—have been striking in their consistency and are a refutation of many leader stereotypes. People frequently assume, for example, that leadership is different from one type of organization or culture to the next. Nothing could be further from the truth. While each setting may look different from the outside, we find that what leaders do when they are at their best is quite similar. This pattern of behavior varies little across locations and circumstances. It's true enough that the context keeps evolving, and the landscape of workplaces, communities, and countries has shifted over time, but leadership remains an understandable and generalizable process. While each leader is a unique individual, there are shared patterns to the practice of leadership. In each chapter of this book, you will find empirical evidence that shows the positive difference leaders without titles make across a wide spectrum of settings.

You can find out more about how we conducted the research for this book in the Appendix. Details about the research methodology, including psychometric properties of the Leadership Practices Inventory and analytics, as well as highlights of validation studies by various independent scholars are available on our website: www.leadershipchallenge.com. Those interested in broadening their perspective on leadership should look at some of our other leadership books, such as Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It; The Truth About Leadership: The No-Fads, Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know; and Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader.

A Guidebook on Leadership

Consider Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership as a guidebook to take along on your leadership journey. We have designed it to describe what leaders do, explain the fundamental principles that support these leadership practices, and provide actual case examples of real people in the workplace or community who demonstrate each practice. Based on the real-world experiences of thousands of people who have answered the call for leadership, we offer specific recommendations on what you can do to make these practices your own and to continue your leadership development.

Chapter 1 introduces you to our point of view about leadership—specifically that leadership is not a position, hierarchical place, or genetic trait. We discuss leadership as a relationship, and we reveal who is at the top of the list of leadership role models. We describe the characteristics that people most desire in their leaders and present the foundation on which all great leadership is built. We briefly describe The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® revealed in our research. We tell the leadership story from the inside and move outward, describing leadership first as a personal journey of exploration and then as a mobilization of others. The research shows that leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women, but instead a learnable set of behaviors and actions people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others.

In Chapters 2 through 6 we explore each of The Five Practices, one to a chapter, and demonstrate that taken together they provide an operating system for leadership. Once you understand the “operating system,” you can create and run any number of different applications off of it, akin to what an operating system provides for computer software. Discussions build on the results of our original research, buttressed by studies from other scholars, and provide a particular point of view on leadership that is empirically sound and practically useful. Case examples and empirical evidence generously illustrate each leadership practice and document how using more of each practice yields more favorable outcomes. Each chapter has recommended actions, concluding with two specific first steps that you should take to put the leadership practice to use in developing your leadership capabilities.

In Chapter 7, we share some concluding research on how leadership matters not only to your colleagues or community, but also to you personally. We discuss six fundamentals for learning leadership, and explore three basic types of learning opportunities. In so doing we aim to demystify leadership and show how every person has the capacity to learn to lead. Finally, we advise that the process of becoming the best leader you can be will fundamentally change who you are and how you present yourself day in and day out. To that end, we offer a concluding reflective activity to help you get started on the next stage of your leadership journey.

The Future of Leadership

The domain of leaders is the future. We hope this book contributes to the ongoing revitalization of the workplace, to the renewal of healthy communities, and to greater respect and understanding among people of all traditions. We fervently hope that it enriches your life and the lives of your colleagues, your friends, and family. The most significant contribution you can make as a leader is to strengthen others so they can adapt, grow, and flourish.

Leadership matters. It's essential in every sector, in every community, and in every country. In these times of unprecedented change, organizations and communities need more leaders, and now more than ever they need leaders who can unite and mobilize others in a common cause.

So much extraordinary work needs to be done, and you have the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in how it is done. Accept the challenge to learn to become the best leader you can be—for the sake of your community, your workplace, and for those you love.

James M. Kouzes

Barry Z. Posner

November 2020