Your Leadership Moment: Democratizing Leadership in an Age of Authoritarianism (Taking Adaptive Leadership to the Next Level)
Take Adaptive Leadership to the Next Level and Seize Your Leadership Moment
“Each of us has the potential for a leadership moment. Reading this book will help you find yours.” ―Dr. Marty Linsky, faculty at Harvard Kennedy School & author of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
#1 New Release in Business & Money Skills and Office Management
Adaptive Leadership was introduced to the world in 1994 by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky of the Harvard Kennedy School. Author Eric Martin brings an expansion and distillation of Adaptive Leadership to new life for novices and advanced leadership practitioners alike, building on his work with Heifetz and Linsky.
Next level of Adaptive Leadership. Your Leadership Moment draws on the extensive personal research, travel, conversations, and reflections of author Eric Martin, a prominent leadership expert. His quest to ‘democratize leadership’ has taken him around the world―from the White House to the foothills of the Himalayas. Through stories of success and failure, Martin teaches what’s possible when people discover the capacity and courage to lead regardless of identity, history, or access to power and financial capital.
Be an authentic leader who changes the world. Your Leadership Moment is an account of the democratizing leadership of three ordinary people leading extraordinary change. It’s an exciting expansion of Adaptive Leadership that can help anyone learn to lead. Your Leadership Moment provides tools and techniques to discover and leverage your leadership moments for a better world.
Your Leadership Moment empowers you to:
- Understand a Leadership Moment and key concepts of Adaptive Leadership
- Stop solving the wrong problems and start solving the right problems
- Think politically and mobilize others to make real, positive change
- Stop getting in your own way
If you liked The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Leadership on the Line, or An Everyone Culture, you’ll love Your Leadership Moment.
Reviews (57)
A Personal & Interpersonal Journey
Democratizing leadership is Eric Martin’s stated passion and goal. In Your Leadership Moment, Eric was able to bring together the theories and lessons from his many workshops, as well as vivid stories of his and others’ leadership experience in a well written and captivating volume. This is not a book about “leaders” and “followers”; nor it is about a magic formula that if you just do “A”, you’d get “B”. Leadership has always been about ordinary people performing courageous acts of leading change for the good of all – whether it is within our family, friends, colleagues, or the society at large. For example, a central question that was asked in the book: “Whose job is it to lead change…?” causes us to reflect on the difference between an authority figure (who arrive in-the-nick-of-time to save the day) versus someone exercising leadership to empower others to do the hard work necessary for real change to take place. Throughout this book, Eric Martin acts as our guide to inform, motivate, reflect, and inspire us to become the person we aspired to be. By personally accepting the leadership challenge in matters large and small, each of us has the power to realize Eric's ideals of democratizing leadership. This is a must read for anyone who cares about helping people to deal with change to build a better and just future for all.
No title needed to lead...
"Your Leadership Moment" is one of those rare books which inspires us to speak up & to speak truth when the powerful & people in positions of authority won't. That's what it means to "democratize leadership in an age of authoritarianism" -- that's what it means to recognize "your leadership moment" when it comes, because it will. Don't get intimidated by the word "authoritarianism" -- it's the right word, and a good word for these times (Nov. '20). Eric's book challenges us to ask the good question, the hard question, the question no one is willing to ask, the question "authorities" are afraid to ask because they don't have an answer, the question which requires us to see things differently, maybe even see ourselves differently. He also invites & equips us to then mobilize ourselves & others not because we hold a position of leadership but because that's how healthy democracies work. It's about "we" the people. We as everyday citizens have a responsibility to stand up & lead when it's our turn. No title is needed. That's why Eric's book is so important, especially today.
Deep and practical wisdom to create a better world and a better self.
I do not give five star ratings. Except for this book. I knew Martin's insights would be a worthy read, but I was not prepared to be absorbed by the stories he tells, by his clarity of writing on hard and 'deep' topics of leadership, personal growth, change, or by his immensely practical steps to become a 'leader' in the richest sense of the word. This book comes at a time of great challenge, and it will be an indispensible tool to call all of us to be leaders, to democratize and equalize our ability to affect change. This book calls you to your passion and gives you the wisdom and knowledge to follow it. Read it for all of us. Seriously.
The book we need right now
In this time of increasing Balkanization - on national identity, race, class, or ethnicity - in countries and societies around the world, Eric Martin’s Your Leadership Moment is the book we need right now. (The subtitle: Democratizing Leadership in an Age of Authoritarianism is almost laughably on point for this moment!) As we watch the alarming failure of the appointed “leaders” to provide the structure and opportunity for progress to happen, or in fact actively work to oppose it, for personal or clan gain, we need a new way to emerge. This author’s treatment of “Democratizing Leadership” and “Adaptive Change” show us a possible path forward. Martin uses an evocative personal narrative of growing up in the family of Detroit Firefighters in the 1980’s to hang together stories of individual empowerment from around the world. Stories of people without the designated authority or influence that accompanies official “leadership” who realize that the ability to create change and empower communities is within themselves. The author creates a compelling argument that this is not just a possible way to progress, but perhaps the necessary way to solve the largest challenges confronting the globe today. From climate change to a global health crisis, the concept of Democratized Leadership gives me hope. Although filled with practical information on how to adopt these concepts to you own work, community and family, I found the book to be an enjoyable read in a genre that is often dry or rote. Highly recommended! The hope we need right now!
Just what we need in a polarizing environment
What's the best medicine for disagreement and apathy? Finding a method for rising above both and moving forward with intention. That's the message from Eric Martin's superbly written and beautifully crafted Your Leadership Moment. Democratizing Leadership is not something we are routinely accustomed to. But it's just what we all need to put aside divisiveness, focus on what really matters, take change and impact into our own hands and truly make our mark in this constantly shifting world we live in. Absolutely worth the time and effort, especially as we wade through the pandemic and election challenges of 2020.
Leadership lives in each of us . . .this book shows us how to give that leadership life.
Eric shows us a world desperately in need for more of us to seize the leadership moments there for the taking each and every day. He writes “People learn from people.” And then he does just that. He opens up and lets in his readers, allowing each of his to learn with and from him. Set to the backdrop of coming of age in a breaking down Detroit, Eric brings us along as he gradually builds the empathy for his father that we might all need to build with those we don’t yet understand. When he talks about the costs of leadership, he does so in deeply personal terms—exploring the shame, fear and guilt that keep us in place while turning that lens inward, back on himself. Eric makes real what it looks like to break ranks as he follows the course of three people, each with a cause powerful enough to set fire to old habits and weather the ensuing tumult. As I read, I envisioned a gathering snowball: small acts of leadership gaining momentum and force to build the collective courage to engage from a place of possibility. In the end, Eric helps us to listen in on the quiet, still place in our own hearts and to let the purpose alive there serve as a guide—a way out from our collective addiction to authority and into the terrain of curiosity, empathy, and crossing the boundaries that threaten to keep us all trapped in our own echo chambers.
Helped me see what's most important
This is a well written book - doing a nice job of illustrating important leadership concepts with real life, inspiring examples. It has given me insight on what my leadership work really is - and it's changed how I am doing my advocacy work. In the last year I started to lead an initiative through my church to address the issue of homelessness and lack of affordable and supportive housing. It's easy to get focused on the day-to-day tasks of providing services to those in need, and doing advocacy on individual housing projects - losing sight of the real problem. We need to change the hearts and minds of the voting public so that we can start to garner support for bringing significant financial resources to bear on the problem of homelessness. We also need to galvanize people to apply a range of innovative approaches to solving the problem. This book is helping me to navigate through my "leadership moments".
A unique and important book
Eric Martin’s book makes a unique and important contribution to the field of Adaptive Leadership. It’s a practical guide, but it also offers a remarkably personal view, both in the author sharing the story of his own relationship to this work and in helping readers understand what the moment-to-moment inner experience of living into this approach feels like – what they might expect. I know of no other book that does this as well, which is why this is my favorite work on Adaptive Leadership. What a brave and unique contribution!
good read
Empowering - author provides a 360 about leadership and making change. Books helps you to identify opportunities for change that are right there before you. You get a framework to grow personally and professionally.
Powerful and Honest
i have been anticipating the arrival of this book every since i got word of it. and although i’ve still got a bit more to finish, i have to say it does not disappoint. from the very beginning, it is clear that this book is on a mission to begin to show what is possible. each story, including Eric’s personal story included in the Introduction, foregoes the rose-colored glasses to illustrate a reality filled with the right doses of potent honesty and empowering optimism. nothing feels fake or contrived, making it that much more of a riveting read. may these stories of social, racial, and political healing be sprinkled far and wide...the world certainly needs it!
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