Author Description

We write this book for two audiences. The first is leaders who are embracing the changes within our organizations and want to evolve and grow their leadership. This book will resonate most with leaders adopting this new language, as they know there are paradigmatic Cultural (Culture with a capital "C") changes that come with it. The second audience? Aspiring leaders. We have taught enough leadership courses at enough universities to know there is a new generation of leadership coming up through the pipeline, and they are begging for a different language. They know the "old" paradigm of leadership is antiquated and, in some cases, broken. We do not currently have a language of leadership that gives us the opportunity to have genuine and relevant conversations about what it means to lead in this era. We are hopeful our contribution here will advance this conversation in some way. In short, we've got fire-and it has changed our lives. We want to share this fire with you, so we can learn with you and from you. In the nine chapters that follow, we will lay out a framework built from small language changes you can make as early as tomorrow and bolder language changes that will take time to introduce. You will have to gauge your own tolerance. Some of the bigger changes suggested later in this book might not be right for you or your organization at the present time. Remember, it took me nearly 15 years to build and fully understand this new language, and it is unrealistic to think this is something you can adopt over a long weekend.