Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You
Frances Frei and Anne Morriss
Harvard Business Review Press (June 2020)

“People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Theodore Roosevelt

Robert K. Greenleaf (1904-1990) is generally associated with the concept of servant leadership. Here is a brief excerpt from one of his essays, first published in 1970: “The servant-leader is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”

In TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments (2011), a book co-authored with Mette Norgaard, Doug Conant shares valuable insights on effective servant leadership in the workplace. He observes that “each day is an elaborate sequence of TouchPoints: interactions with one other person, a couple of people, or a group that can last a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, or a couple of days. Those TouchPoints can be planned or spontaneous, casual or carefully choreographed. They take place in hallways, on factory floors, in conference rooms, on the phone, and via e-mail or instant messaging. Some deal with straightforward, relatively minor issues, while others involve complex challenges with wide-ranging effects.

“Sadly, leaders often see these interactions as distractions that get in the way of their real work: the important work of strategizing, planning, and prioritizing. Only, these touch points are the real work. They are the moments that bring your strategies and priorities to life, the interactions that translate your ideas into new and better behaviors. How do you do that? By infusing each TouchPoint, no matter how brief, with greater clarity and genuine commitment.”

I share all this with you — no doubt testing your patience — because I want to establish an appropriate context, a fame of reference, for the wealth of invaluable information, insights, and counsel that Frances Frei and Anne Morriss provide in Unleashed.

They nail it in this passage: “Your job as a leader is to create the conditions for the people around you  to become increasingly effective, to help them fully realize their own capacity and power. And not only when you’re in the trenches with them, but also when you’re not around, and even (this is the cleanest test) after you’ve permanently moved on from the team.”

Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations need effective leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. Throughout history, most of the greatest leaders seem to have had a “green thumb” for “growing” leaders from among those entrusted to their care. Consider my favorite passage in Lao tse’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

According to Frei and Morriss, the practical definition of leadership used in this book is that “leadership is about empowering other people as a result of your presence — and making sure that impact continues into your absence. Your job as a leader is to create the conditions for the people around you to become increasingly effective, to help them fully realize their own capacity and power.”

Throughout their lively and eloquent narrative, they stress the importance of this orientation as the scope and depth of one’s leadership mandate increases.

These are among the passages of greatest interest to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Frei and Morriss’ coverage:

o Empowerment leadership (Pages 12-14 and 165-192)
o Trust (31-58)
o Love (59-87)
o “Ten Ways to Set Higher Standards Tomorrow” (78-80)
o Belonging (89-127)

o “Ten Signs Your Organization Is Stalling” (92-94)
o Attracting diverse talent (95-104)
o “How to Attract Great Women” (98-101)
o Make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive (104-114)
o “How to Create Spaces Where LGBT+ People Feel Like They Belong” (110-113)

o “Why We’re Often Skeptical of 360-Degree Reviews” (117-119)
o The right strategy for when there is an absence of direct, hands-on leadership (135-163)
o What is culture? (166-172)
o Do you have a culture problem? (172-179)
o Culture Change Playbook (182-185)

Obviously, no brief commentary such as mine could possibly do full justice to the abundance of valuable information, insights, and counsel that Frances Frei and Anne Morriss provide in this volume. However, I hope I have at least indicated why I think so highly of them and their work. Ultimately, however, the value of the material can only be determined by these three factors: how well a reader absorbs and digests it; how carefully they select whatever is most relevant to their organization’s specific needs, interests, resources, and objectives; and finally, how effectively the reader and their colleagues apply the material to enrich the given enterprise.

Had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic, more than $70-billion would have been spent this year on formal and informal leadership development programs and much (if not most) of these efforts would have either failed or fallen far short of expectations. Why? Reasons vary but perhaps the most common reason would again be a lack of focus on helping people to accelerate their personal growth and professional development [begin italics] by helping others to do so. [end italics].

In this context, I am again reminded of this African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”