Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership

PREFACEThe 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 ...