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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

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