Leadership is not about You

Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You by Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss
Harvard Business Review, June 2, 2020

Leadership, think Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss, is about empowering people. Leadership is not about you, the leader. Rather, the mark of effective leadership is the degree to which the leader has unleashed the potential of everyone within the organization. Additionally, good leaders create cultures that do not depend on the personal attributes of the leader themselves; they create cultures that endure after they, themselves, depart the organization. Anchoring the books' central argument with examples ranging from ancient Rome to present-day Silicon Valley, Frei and Morris explore attitudes, dispositions, and behaviors that allow leaders to unlock the best potential of the people around them. Educational leaders will find the business examples to hold mixed applicability to school settings. However, this deficit is balanced by the incisive use of concrete modeling and tools to help leaders identify how their practices are, or are not, empowering those around them. In particular, the authors' deft deployment of lists means that even a casual read yields ready-made tools and easily-implemented advice.