Leadership Is An Activity, Not A Position: With Julia Fabris McBride & Ed O’Malley [Podcast]

This month I had the privilege of connecting up with Julia Fabris McBride and Ed O’Malley to talk about their new book from the Kansas Leadership Center, When Everyone Leads The Toughest Challenges Get Seen and Solved. I’ve always admired the KLC framework, and their new book really aligns with the principles of Compassionate Accountability®. For example, here are three key points from the book that match each of the three switches of The Compassion Mindset.

1. People are valuable. Leaders in positions of authority must make it safe for others to lead. Psychological safety is critical for grassroots leadership.
2. People are capable. The toughest challenges are adaptive challenges, and these cannot be solved without everyone’s contribution.
3. People are responsible. Because leadership is an activity, not a position, it’s everyone’s responsibility to initiate, speak up, and become part of the solution, regardless of your position or title.

See what’s in this episode, watch a highlight video, listen to the audio or read the transcript.

What’s In This Episode

• Ed and Julia’s relationship at KLC over the years.
• How their new book fits into their professional careers and passions.
• How is the book structured and what do you want people to experience?
• What are the biggest challenges we are facing now?
• What is the difference between adaptive and technical challenges?
• What role does conflict play in leadership?
• What are your favorite principles from the book?
• What are you most hopeful about?

When Everyone Leads Highlights

Listen To The Audio

Read The Transcript

Nate Regier 

Are you a leader who cares deeply about a positive and trusting work culture but also wants to keep a laser focus on performance? Do you ever feel pulled between the two? Good news. You don’t have to choose. My podcast is dedicated to the belief that compassion and accountability are meant to work together. Never before in our history has the need for Compassionate Accountability^® been greater. Everything from our personal well-being to our collective survival depends on it. So, I share wisdom stories and best practices from experts who are in the trenches, making Compassionate Accountability a reality. I’m Nate Regier, our host for OnCompassion with Dr. Nate. I’m also the founder and CEO of Next Element Consulting and author of four books about compassion at work, including my new book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. I’m a husband, dad, competitive barbecue, woodworker, and avid outdoors person. Thank you for joining me, and I hope you’ll implement the tips and tools in this show. If you benefit from my podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review to help us reach more listeners. Also, be sure to visit my website at next-element.com and go to the podcast page to access the notes and links for each show.

Leadership is not about position or authority. It’s not about big speeches or grand visions. Leadership is engaging others to solve our daunting challenges. Those challenges appear in our professional lives and our communities, our families, and they seem unsolvable – beyond our ability to see what needs to be done or outside our capacity to make the changes needed. But they’re not because leadership is an activity, small actions taken in moments of opportunity. And as you start to look around, you can begin to see more of those moments and seize opportunity in those moments. Most importantly, you can help others see those opportunities too.

What I just shared is an inspiring call to action around leadership and joining me today are two of the visionary thought leaders behind this call to action. I remember the first time I got to spend time with Ed O’Malley. He agreed to meet me for breakfast at the legendary Doo-Dah Diner in downtown Wichita. It was a real privilege for me. I felt honored to spend quality time with the founding president and CEO of the illustrious Kansas Leadership Center, an organization committed to fostering leadership for stronger, healthier, and more prosperous Kansas communities. You see, Ed and I began similar journeys around the same time. I helped found Next Element in ‘08 and he helped found KLC in 2007. And by the time we met in around 2010, KLC was already a rapidly growing well respected entity in Kansas and beyond. I admired Ed for what he had done and I just wanted to hang out in his orbit. Ed’s resume is long and impressive, and I’ll let you read more in the show notes. Just a few highlights. He led KLC from a new startup to an internationally recognized leadership training hub. Under his leadership, KLC was instrumental in increasing the number of diverse and underrepresented groups in civic leadership throughout Kansas. Prior to this, Ed served two terms as a Kansas State Representative in the Kansas legislature. Just recently, Ed joined the Kansas Health Foundation in 2022 as the president and CEO. He has extensive civic leadership experience with a consistent theme of representing, uplifting, and supporting diversity in leadership.

Julia Fabris McBride is one of those special people who just doesn’t fit in a box. I met Julia while she was working with Ed at KLC and, attracted to each other’s leadership development frameworks, we arranged to orient our respective teams to each other’s models. I remember that day Julia came to our office. It was a really special day learning about KLC’s principles of adaptive leadership, and those concepts are still in our brains and in our work today. Julia is the KLC Chief Civic Leadership Development Officer. She’s also a certified coach and coauthor of two books, one of which we’ll be talking about today. At KLC, she oversees teacher and coach development and has created three professional programs for leadership developers and coaches. Her programs have drawn people to Wichita from four continents. Julia is much more than a leadership development expert though. I encourage you to explore her background in the show notes and learn more about her career as an actor in Chicago, her stint as a university professor, and her life in the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie of Kansas. Ed and Julia both embody a compassion mindset with their deep caring for people, their curiosity, and their commitment to excellence. I invited them to join me because they’re coauthors of KLC’s newest book, When Everybody Leads: How the Toughest Challenges Get Seen and Solved. I’m so looking forward to diving into the message and principles of this groundbreaking work.

Ed and Julia, welcome to OnCompassion.

Ed O’Malley

Wow. Thank you. Julia, best introduction ever.

Julia Fabris McBride

That was awesome.

Ed O’Malley

I know, I just want to hear it again and again, I’ll listen to the podcast several times.

Nate Regier

Right. I’ll send you the recording just of that so you can kind of have it on replay. But no, I meant all of that and I could have gone for a lot longer about all the other cool stuff you’ve done, but people can learn about that. So, you two are here together and, you know, for those of you that don’t know where Ed works, he didn’t just walk across the street. He literally just walked next door. He works next door now with the Kansas Health Foundation. But let’s set up some context. Up until just recently, the two of you worked together for a long time helping build KLC right?

Julia Fabris McBride

Yeah, that’s right.

Ed O’Malley

Yeah. Yeah, a long time. I mean, Julia, we first met shortly after I came to Wichita to start the Kansas Leadership Center. You got involved almost right away. So, yeah, Julia was at KFC practically from the very beginning. And we worked so close together for so long.

Julia Fabris McBride

Well, and back in – I think you started work at KLC in 2007 and one of the first things you did was go around asking, “who are the unusual suspects who are out there teaching and coaching around leadership?” And I had just moved to Kansas. And this mission that you talked about Nate of the Kansas Leadership Center and the aspirations Ed had to do leadership development at scale, just blew my mind and changed everything about how I saw my career from that moment forward.

Ed O’Malley

But Nate, I love how you remember. So clearly, our first meeting. Julia, I remember ours. Our first real engagement was on the porch, in Flint Hills, little picnic lunch, I came out to visit Matfield Green, your hometown, and it was just absolutely lovely, and began a wonderful, wonderful relationship, building and guiding KLC.

Nate Regier

Well, for my listeners that have maybe never been to Kansas, the Flint Hills is one-of-a-kind experience. It’s unlike any other geography in the world and it is really special. So, the two of you have written a couple books, and your newest one is called When Everybody Leads. And, you know, you all are very modest. You represent KLC when you write this but the two of you are the identified authors, and I’m curious how this current book, and we’re going to get into details, but how does this current book fit into your respective careers, your passions and the other work that you’ve done?

Julia Fabris McBride

Oh, what a great question. I think, for me, this book fits beautifully into all the work that I’ve been doing over the years developing leadership programs that have brought thousands and thousands of people to KLC, virtually and in person. And these are people from companies and nonprofit organizations, faith communities, education. And the book is the synthesis of the challenges they’ve faced when trying to exercise leadership and great little moments and stories and tips that come out of their making more progress. Because they start to think about leadership as an activity and something that everybody can do.

Ed O’Malley

I think what I would add, I wasn’t planning on leaving KLC basically, right when the book launch down the road. That was not the plan, it just happened to flow that way. And I love that really the last major project that I was intimately connected with, was coauthoring this book with you, Julia. And what I love about it is one kind of a capstone to our relationship here at KLC. But also, the book is the best introduction to the ideas of KLC we’ve written yet, and I’m proud that that was the last contribution. And in some ways, I wished, you know, why couldn’t we have written something that clear and concise and accessible, you know, back in 2010, or 2011, or 2012, but we just needed the experience. And we needed working with more and more people but I love that we got there and I love that was my last big project.

Nate Regier

Definitely a capstone project. And I can totally relate with wishing that we could have written like that in the beginning, but you couldn’t have because your book is all about what you’ve learned. But it’s also about how you’ve come to be able to articulate the concepts clearer and crisper. And if you think about how many thousands of times you’ve tried to explain these concepts, and each time you do it, you now have the benefit of real experience, real stories. And that is something really unique about this book that I think makes it makes it so much more elegant. And, I was going to ask you what is the main thrust, but the title is so beautiful, because it says it. When everybody leads, the toughest problems get seen and solved. So, how have you structured this book? And what I mean by that is, how did you build it? What is the journey and experience that you want people to have?

Ed O’Malley

Hmm. Wow.

Julia Fabris McBride

Can you talk about – a little bit about – how we built it? And then let me talk a little bit about the journey and experience we want people to have?

Ed O’Malley

You bet. Yeah. I mean, in terms of how we built it, was we knew, we knew we could do better at introducing the key ideas of KLC. And one of our other books, Your Leadership Edge, which we are so proud of, and it it really works. It works with people, people love it. But it was short on the why and heavy on kind of the what. What do you do? Full of lots of quick tips, ideas, suggestions. And so we knew we needed this kind of, we think it was like a prequel. You know, remember when Star Wars came? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, this is our version of a prequel. And it was a lot before we ever got to writing. It was a lot of usually wonderful, sometimes frustrating, meetings with Julia, myself, our publisher, our team members, you know, banging our heads together, trying to figure out what’s the – you know what are the key ideas? What is the essence of KLC, that has got to get presented as clearly as possible? So, a lot of tough, awesome discussions.

Nate Regier

So, I want to interject there. Before you go on, I know a little bit about the original kind of founding vision of KLC, and how you went about trying to learn from communities. So, it was really a data-driven process. And it was like the data told you what the themes were, but only experience tells you what the principles are. And it seems like you have figured that out over time. Which is, which is something I don’t know how you could ever know in the beginning.

Ed O’Malley

I love the way you just said that. And so, for folks who are really connected to KLC, they’ll know that a lot of the framework revolves around four competencies and five principles. And the principles did come later. And I think, actually, this book really describes the heart of those principles. We, for different reasons, chose not to orient the whole book directly around those five things. It’s really a book about our principles, our core beliefs, like we’ve never read before.

Nate Regier

Yeah. And Julia, so you’re going to tell us about the journey and experience?

Julia Fabris McBride

Yeah, I think that I mean, the journey that we want people to have is, wow, wow, leadership is an activity. And it’s about these challenges that I am, up until this moment, have been almost afraid to think about, let alone talk about my boldest aspirations, you know, for my community, or for my institution. But wow. Not only can I exercise more leadership, but I now see a few ways to do that. Just a few, just like four. And, I understand that if I don’t exercise more leadership, and if I don’t make leadership less risky for others, we’re not going to make progress. So, I’ve been talking lately about this stuff is not complicated. It does take courage. And what we want when people finish the book, or when they come through our six-hour program based on the book, they go away, saying, wow, I have more courage as a result of this. And I see that if I don’t, if I don’t embrace these ideas, nothing’s going to happen. The world needs me to embrace these ideas. And I think what we’d been seeing before that was people would read Your Leadership Edge, or which is more based on all the behaviors we know that help to make progress. But they would spend the whole book or the whole two-day program, being overwhelmed with how many different things they could be doing and not as much in touch with the why, and the why me.

Nate Regier 

So, a theme I’m hearing there is you wanted people to not only realize that they are the people we’re talking about here, this is up to you. But you can do this. It doesn’t have to be complicated and overwhelming. And I love that. And that’s such an embodiment of leadership as an activity, not a position, then that means any of us can do it, which means how do we build that confidence and competence to do that? And, you know, if you’ve read any of my stuff, you know, my listeners, you know, I love practical tips. And our clients are always telling us just give me the words, just give me the words. So, I want to I want to, we’re going to jump straight to a lightning round right here. So, in the beginning of your book, the first section is we’re dealing with big stuff, big problems here. And so, I’m curious if each of you real quickly would list what do you think are the two biggest problems that leaders should and can be ready to solve with this book?

Ed O’Malley

Well, I mean, I’ll just jump in lightning round style. I have a background in civic life, so I jumped to the polarization in our society, which is creeping into our organizations and right, we know that. And to me, that is one of the biggest challenges facing organizational and civic life and people who want to help their company, organization, community move forward, they can’t pretend like that’s not an issue. They can’t be like that’s something that doesn’t have to be, that not worthy of their exercise of leadership. And it’s one most daunting challenges we’re facing.

Nate Regier

Oh, my gosh, yes. Yes. Thank you. What do you think Julia?

Julia Fabris McBride

Well, and as a result, we can’t make progress on the challenges, the more concrete perhaps challenges. Like yesterday, we hosted a conversation around immigration. And because we started with the premise that we need everyone leading, there were people from all different walks of life in that room, and they were all bringing, they were all looking at the challenge. And it’s not that the polarization wasn’t pressing – there was pressure to polarize. But it really felt like we were starting to make progress on some policy that might be acceptable to 85% of people in Kansas.

Nate Regier 

What a wonderful mindset shift. We can take a different approach to this. So, if we’re talking about a prequel, as well as a culmination at the same time, then let’s go into the Wayback Machine. And in your book, you do reference this idea of adaptive challenges versus technical challenges. And I think it’s such a critical part of your philosophy and so valuable to my listeners. Will you give just a really quick description of what is the difference between these? And why does it matter?

Julia Fabris McBride

Yeah, I mean, we want to treat problems as if they’re technical. And a technical problem, and there are plenty of them, but a technical problem is one where the solution, the problem, is pretty clear. And the example I’ve been using lately is, I work in a restaurant, somebody comes in, they want food, the restaurant wants money, and there’s a problem. The solution is we get them the food, they pay the bill. It’s done by an expert, me, who’s waiting tables. I’ve moved from restaurant to restaurant, I’ve gotten better and better. And the process is efficient. And I want to do it with confidence and skill.

Nate Regier

Easy peasy.

Julia Fabris McBride

Easy peasy.

Julia Fabris McBride

I might trip and spill a bunch of things, but I know how to fix it. Right. And I’m the expert. And it’s natural. We don’t need everyone to go into the kitchen to get the food. You pay the expert to do that. With an adaptive challenge, and you know, we can talk about immigration. We’ve been talking about living a Christian life in today’s society . . . .

Ed O’Malley

A merger of two companies can be an adaptive challenge. Also it can be big civic things. It can be organizational things.

Julia Fabris McBride

Yeah. Running a small business in, you know, in today’s world. So, with an adaptive challenge, how do you do that? How do you build the culture to make that business function well? That problem is not clear. And so the solution’s not clear. And yeah, there’s a role for the owner or the CEO, but really you need everyone who’s impacting that system to be thinking about how do we build a culture where this small business is going to be sustainable, and be able to meet the needs of our community. So, with an adaptive challenge, the problem requires learning. And therefore the solution requires learning. And the people who need to do the work are everyone, the stakeholders. And it’s not fix it or follow the process. It’s backed experimentally and learn. Try things and see if it moves you in the direction of your aspirations.

Nate Regier

Boy, I love the principles, the themes there. Gosh, I’m seeing this parallel. So, this notion of compassion that we talk about, where compassion means “struggle with.” This is a collective process. Everybody is doing this. Tt’s hard. But it’s not the struggling against where either I wait for you to do it or I’m adversarially in a relationship with you around it. Awesome stuff.

Julia Fabris McBride

And we want to work like we value our partnership with you. Because if you don’t have the, if you don’t bring the compassion and the struggle with, and if you don’t bring the willingness and the skill to be direct with other people, then you can’t do the kind of learning that adaptive challenges require.

Ed O’Malley

I think the only thing I would add to this, as Julia started off by saying, we want to treat problems, challenges as if they’re technical and I think what we would say is, like one of the biggest challenges in, one of the biggest problems with people when they tried to exercise leadership, is they treat the adaptive challenges as if they’re technical. They treat challenges that need more compassion from you, that need you to have a generous interpretation and lots of interpretations about what’s going on or the people around you. And instead, they treat it like a problem that has a clear definition of a clear, easy solution, and usually is about a deficiency in somebody else.

Nate Regier

And then let’s go ahead and try to do it over Zoom in a transactional way with 10 minutes of agenda time. Well, you know, you’ve opened the door for this, and I want to go here, which is let’s talk about conflict. Because we’re both fans of conflict. And I love the way this section of your book frames this.  You know, I talk a lot about conflict is opportunity, it’s energy, it’s what we should do with it. And the title of the section where you talk about this is called Use the Heat. And I love that.  It’s such a beautiful . . . and there’s a couple real tidbits in there, really gems. Will you share just briefly, what is philosophically, what is your view on conflict? And how can it be . . . how should we be using it?

Ed O’Malley

I’ll take a stab at that first. Julia, I don’t think we don’t think conflict is a bad thing. We think our organizations, our families, our communities, our society, is currently designed to get all the results they’re getting, right? It’s a system. It’s a system theory going on. And if you want to get different results, you probably are going to need to disrupt something. You’re going to have to change something. In our experience with adaptive challenges, the really tough challenges, is they require the types of change that bring loss or the perception of loss. So that conflict is baked in. And those most skilled at exercising leadership do a fabulous job of helping people think about the losses involved with change, help mitigate the losses. So, it’s not just one group. It’s not just accounting, or the people north of the river, accepting all of the bad consequences from the change, but the losses are more shared. But conflict is inherent to progress, which is why it’s not bad. It’s beautiful. And we need people to know that and be competent at how to how to use it for the greater good.

Nate Regier

Well, and it’s inherent in diversity. Yeah, by its very nature, yeah. Thank you.

Ed O’Malley

Just real quick on that. As our nation here in America becomes beautifully more diverse, which creates incredible opportunity to achieve things we’ve never achieved before, it does mean though there are often more diverse perspectives, with authority wrestling together. And in the olden days, there was more alignment. And now there’s more diversity, which is beautiful but requires us to have the skill to negotiate how we change together.

Nate Regier

Julia, you reference the stories –  I could tell how your voice and your face lit up when you’re talking about these stories and these experiences. And every chapter has just a wonderful anecdote. And that anecdote captures the conundrums, the dilemmas, the adaptive challenges. And then the chapter says, “Hey, let’s look at it this way. Here’s some tools.” So, there are so many in the book, I’m curious if each of you would be willing to share maybe one of your favorite principles. I mean, I know it’s your book, like children, you know, you can’t pick a favorite, but are there any that just you find so powerful and juicy, or connect with you in a particular way that you would be willing to share?

Julia Fabris McBride

I think the thing that has surprised me is one of the ideas in the book, and it’s maybe the second to last chapter is make leadership less risky for others. And that has been so powerful in talking with people in the C suite, people with traditional authority, about the ideas in this book. And one of the cool things is, if you’re going to make leadership less risky for others, you yourself have to embrace this idea that leadership is an activity and anyone, anytime, anywhere, and you and there is a role then for you, in making space for people to ask the question that nobody wants to answer. I was at a university just this week where somebody said – partly because I’ve given them permission, I’d made it less risky – somebody said, “I’m the new guy and I’m going to ask this question. How do we manage these, this clash of values between wanting to grow and be innovative, and be there for everybody in our diverse student body?” And that guy might not – definitely wouldn’t have – spoken up unless somebody was asking about competing values. And so, this idea that people in positions of authority, there’s a special role for you. And it’s making space and helping people build skills to ask open-ended, curious questions. And to make multiple interpretations and even the interpretations people might not want to hear.

Nate Regier

Boy, that’s really taking this concept of psychological safety or interaction safety the next level and saying interaction safety and psychological safety from a sense of dignity is important. But what it’s really about is creating a place where everybody feels safe to lead and feels empowered to lead.

Ed O’Malley

Yeah, and Nate if I could just build on that. And one of the journeys – Julia really did a great job describing one of the journeys we want readers to have.  For some readers the journey is going to be, “Ah, this is what leadership is. Oh, I can do this. Ah, I can have the courage.  Oh, here’s some ways.” For individuals who read this book, who are in key authority roles, that have high positions in their organizations, companies or communities, frankly, the journey for them that I want them to have, for those individuals, is an understanding that the biggest challenges that you say you care about and you want to see progress on, require everyone to be exercising leadership, or at least enough of everyone. You are insufficient as the senior authority, the CEO. You’re critically important and you’re insufficient, and therefore use your authority to unleash leadership from throughout your organization, system, and community.

Nate Regier

We often say when top leaders say Okay, so what do I do next to try to do these things? And we’re like, it’s just three things: get vulnerable, ask for help, and just get crystal clear about what matters most with your people. And it sounds like you’re really providing a roadmap for that. So, I know my listeners can hear your passion, hear the enthusiasm in your voice, and this enthusiasm doesn’t just come from the ideas it comes from the results you’ve seen over the years. So, I’d love to hear from each of you, from your work, living and breathing and teaching these concepts what gives you the most hope. Where does your hope lie?

Julia Fabris McBride

My hope lies in the stories such as one reported in the journal, our quarterly magazine, recently about Four County Mental Health, where they’re needing, because of the way federal funding is going, and because of just the right thing, they’re having to transition from being an organization that’s focused squarely on mental health, to treating everybody they come into contact with holistically. And they’ve been, they have lots of people from all levels of the organization go through our leadership development programs. And they tell us that they’re making this transition faster and more effective. And they can tell stories about who they’re working with outside the organization that they never would have thought of. And how people are working together across the organization in ways that just wouldn’t have occurred to them. And that the results are progress on their transition and better care for people in their community.

Nate Regier

Wow, thank you.

Ed O’Malley

I think what comes to my mind is, what gives me hope, is that I’ve learned now working with how many thousands and thousands of people, you know, 20,000, whatever.

Julia Fabris McBride

Fifteen or seventeen.

Ed O’Malley

I’m a former politician so I round it up, right? But one thing I’ve learned is that when people embrace these ideas, their burden gets lighter, you know, the yoke gets kind of removed. And it’s actually easier. And you know, part of exercising leadership is letting go, part of it is getting the work back. Part of it is learning how to take care of yourself, so that you can be at your full best in order to advance the things you care most about. And so, what gives me hope, is the idea of more and more people – and I think your ideas may do this as well for people – they actually help people feel lighter, and feel like you know, this doesn’t have to be as hard. You know, this can actually be easier if we engage, if I’m vulnerable, if I work to build up other people. So, that gives me hope, because it makes it makes it more sustainable. It makes it feel like less of a magic trick and more of a business endeavor.

Julia Fabris McBride

And the other thing is we have data that shows that people feel more engaged in their work, they feel more hopeful about their organization, and they feel, once they start when once they stop saying I’m going to leave the leadership and the responsibility to somebody higher up the org chart, they feel more fulfilled in their work.

Ed O’Malley

And vice versa. Those at the top feel less burdened, feel less burned out when they build the capacity of their organization to exercise these ideas.

Nate Regier

Folks, when everybody leads, the biggest problems get seen and solved and cultures change, relationships change. Ed and Julia have over 30 years of experience together here on this journey. And this book is a prequel. It’s also a culmination. It also has some tidbits from their other work. I am so grateful for you being here and for sharing this and I know we’ve just barely touched the tip of the iceberg, but you’ve shared some really valuable nuggets. Now I’d like to know as we try to land this plane, what’s next for you? What are you excited about? And you don’t have to just be fully committed to this book. Maybe you got something else percolating or something completely unrelated to work but what is giving you joy and enthusiasm these days.

Ed O’Malley

I’ll hop in first.  So I’m a year into my new role as president of the Kansas Health Foundation and the energy to be in a place that is fully committed to ideas like Compassionate Accountability and ideas like When Everyone Leads and to use all that and channel it towards trying to help our state, Kansas, lead the nation in health. We’re ranked thirty-first right now we want to be number one. That gives me energy, excitement and I feel like it’s just the continuation of my journey in the place I love that I call Kansas.

Nate Regier

That’s awesome.

Julia Fabris McBride

Well, I think one thing is when you put these ideas, you know when you put your talk in a book, you got to walk the walk. And with a new CEO here at KLC now, Kaye Monk-Morgan, we are I think all really committed to, to making leadership less risky for others internally and really stepping up our level of support for our partners who want to do the same thing.

Nate Regier

Well, you two and your relationship through these transitions is such a great testament to how we stay close, we keep working on our goals through transitions, and do it with grace and do it with candor. So, if people want to learn more about you, where should they go?

Julia Fabris McBride

Come to the KansasLeadershipCenter.org website, or Google “When Everyone Leads” or Ed O’Malley or Julia Fabris McBride. But that book has a bright yellow cover, and you kind of can’t miss it if you go to any of those places.

Nate Regier

Yes, it’s a beautiful thing. And I’ve got all those links in the show notes.  And Ed, any other links we should put in there?

Ed O’Malley

Say it again, Nate. I lost you.

Nate Regier

I’ve got all these links. I’ll have them in the show notes. For our listeners, is there any other particular resource you’d like to be sure we include for people to get a hold of you and your work?

Ed O’Malley

You know, I think Julia nailed it. KansasHealth.org is the website for the organization I guide now and especially for this conversation, I’d love folks to think of the Kansas Health Foundation as an experiment.  And taking the ideas that Julia and I have been talking about, and trying to bottle them into an organization, into a set of partners, to make change happen across the state. So, KansasHealth.org.

Nate Regier

Thank you both. Really appreciate you being here. And looking forward to the next great things you’re both going to be doing.

Ed O’Malley

Thanks Nate. It’s been awesome joining you, and we’re a big fan of you as well. Thanks for the opportunity to visit with you.

Julia Fabris McBride

Thank you.

Nate Regier

Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride joined me to talk about their work at the Kansas Leadership Center, culminating in their amazing new book When Everybody Leads. Here are my top three takeaways from this lively and really energizing conversation.

First, leadership is an activity not a position. Wow. The bold and hopeful message here is that we don’t have to wait for identified leaders to make the first move; we can and have to be part of this. The only way to solve the toughest challenges is when everyone engages in leadership. This is a strong calling and a roadmap for success.

Second, technical challenges are different from adaptive challenges. Technical challenges are clearly understood and have clear solutions and can be solved by an expert. An example might be fixing a leaky pipe or serving a meal at a restaurant. Adaptive challenges though aren’t discrete, they don’t have clear solutions and can only be solved when everyone learns and leads together. Examples of these might be a merger or running a small business. Leaders get into trouble when they try to treat adaptive challenges as if they were technical challenges. This sounds a lot like our definition of compassion, which includes struggling with others for the best solutions.

And third, there’s a special role for leaders in positions of authority. Make leadership less risky for others. Create a space where people feel safe and empowered to lead. Examples of this might be asking open-ended curious questions, or making multiple interpretations of a situation, some of which people might not want to hear. Here’s the message for leaders. The biggest challenges you say you want to make progress on require everyone to lead and you alone are not sufficient. You must unleash the leadership capabilities of your people.

Hey, everybody, I hope you enjoyed this episode of OnCompassion with Dr. Nate. If you haven’t already, I invite you to buy a copy of my new book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. Buy multiple copies and unlock some great bonuses like a free keynote presentation. When you buy the book, you’ll get access to a host of resources to bring more compassion to your workplace. Find out more at compassionateaccountabilitybook.com If you’ve already read the book, I’d really appreciate an Amazon review. Thanks