“It is NOT Al Jaber’s COP28.”
Book Review: When Everyone Leads by Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride (Bard Press, 2022)
BY LOWELL BLISS
DIRECTOR EDEN VIGIL INSTITUTE FOR ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP & THE ENVIRONMENT
Dear Ed and Julia,
I am concerned about God’s creation and so I try to stay informed and engaged about climate change. I am greatly troubled by the recent announcement that the host government for COP28, U.A.E., has appointed Sultan Al Jaber to serve as the president of the climate summit. Meanwhile, Al Jaber intends to retain his role as CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the world’s largest petroleum producers. ADNOC’s current plans for new drilling reportedly amount to the second largest expansion of oil and gas production planned globally. The president of a COP has a great deal of influence. They usually spend the better part of two years jet-setting the globe, making the backroom deals as a lead-in and a lead-out for what they hope will be their successful COP. They set the agenda for the COP and govern the proceedings. Meanwhile, I and my fellow climate activists feel our powerlessness. I care so deeply about this crisis, and wish I had a greater leadership role in it, or at least that more apparently sympathetic leaders were put in authority. How do you advise that I approach 2023 and the lead-up to Sultan Al Jaber’s COP?
Signed, Lowell Longs for Leadership
The Ed and Julia of this advice column format are Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride of the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) and authors of a book released this month entitled When Everyone Leads, the Toughest Challenges Get Seen and Solved (Bard Press). I know Ed and Julia personally and can easily imagine the beginnings of their response to me:
Dear Longing Lowell
First of all, it may be the Sultan’s COP presidency, but climate change is not his crisis, nor is a successful COP28. Climate change as an adaptive challenge belongs to all of us. Remember Leadership Principle #1: ‘Leadership is an activity, not a position,’ and Leadership Principle #2: ‘Anyone can lead, anytime, anywhere’ (18). When everyone leads, we make progress on our most important challenges (16). . .
Adaptive leadership is a category of leadership that allows the particular challenge to call the shots. Stakeholders—some in authority, most others not—circle around that important challenge. Adaptive challenges are different than technical ones which can often be solved when those in authority decide to spend the money or locate the expertise to fix them. As Ed and Julia explain,
Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, are not clearly defined. People need to be curious and seek new ways to understand what is going on. Solutions demand developing new tools, methods, and ways of communicating. Progress on big adaptive challenges takes time, willpower, and patience (59).
You can easily see how climate change is classified as an adaptive challenge, perhaps the greatest one of our generation. And Adaptive Leadership is a thing—developed by the likes of Ron Heifitz and Marty Linsky at Harvard’s Kennedy School for Government. In my estimation, no one has done a better job of pulling Adaptive Leadership out of academia for use for the Common Good than the Kansas Leadership Center and their two guiding lights, Ed O’Malley and Julia Fabris McBride. (Full disclosure: the author of this review is certified by KLC to teach the KLC framework.) KLC has published other books before, built around their distillation of Adaptive Leadership into five principles, four competencies, and 24 dimensions, but When Everybody Leads, for all its familiar content, feels different. It is the best popularization yet of this framework and it creates a narrative of its central theme: mobilizing everyone who is circled around your important challenge to lead in that challenge. They write, “The idea that leadership must be self-authorized is easier to grasp when you separate leadership from position and understand that it is an activity…. Rarely do we lead by accident. It’s almost always a conscious choice. It starts with deciding that not only can you lead, but to make progress, you must lead” (120,121).
When Everybody Leads begins with a manifesto entitled “(Re)defining Leadership” which is as good a ten-point summary of Adaptive Leadership as you’ll find anywhere. The definition of leadership they use is “mobilizing people to make progress on the most important challenges,” which, admit it, sounds exactly like your job description as a creation care advocate, doesn’t it? The Five Parts that follow act as categories for highly practical, actionable chapters. Parts 1-4 instruct you to Identify the Gap (between your concerns and aspirations), address Barriers to Progress, Start with You, and Use the Heat. Part 5 returns to the claim that Everyone Can Lead, because everyone can (and must) ask powerful questions, make multiple interpretations, act experimentally, and make leadership less risky for others.
In an attempt to “Make it Real,” Ed and Julia employ a Q/A format at the end of every chapter, similar to how I introduced this review. The chapters themselves, at a moment’s notice, don’t hesitate to spill out a quick list of examples and mini-case studies. KLC was founded in 2007 and has served over 15000 participants and partnerships not only in Kansas but around the world. These examples, while they might be anonymous composite sketches, are nonetheless real people with real adaptive challenges. I even found us on page 147 when someone labeled “Sal Wants to Seize Moment” asks: “Dear Ed and Julia: My leadership challenge is climate change. . . . I’m afraid for the future! There are so many people who think this is a nonissue. How do I get them to listen and change their behavior?” It’s significant that Sal’s climate change question comes at the end of a chapter entitled “Start Where You Have Influence.” Not only is this good advice; it is the exact same advice that Katharine Hayhoe gives us in her latest book Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. See, we’ve known for a while now that climate change is an adaptive challenge. George W. Bush may have held out hope for climate change having a technological solution, but we are far past that point where scientists or policymakers or duly-designated COP presidents can do the work that all of us must do.
What Ed and Julia (and Katharine) demonstrate to us is that we could stand to receive some training. That’s why this past year when Eden Vigil switched from being a creation care/environmental missions ministry to become an institute at William Carey International University, we re-organized as the Eden Vigil Institute for Adaptive Leadershipand the Environment. The Kansas Leadership Center was founded when the Kansas Health Foundation asked the question: “What is the biggest health challenge faced by Kansans?” The answer they arrived at was not the likes of obesity, addiction, or food deserts, but rather: lack of leadership. What is the biggest obstacle that we face in caring for God’s creation? In my mind: the same. I’m happy to recommend When Everybody Leads as one of 2023’s must-read titles for climate activists and creation care advocates.
Reading When Everybody Leads opened my eyes however to a pesky challenge that Ed and Julia themselves face. They’ve written a book with a manifesto-level vision for everyone leading, but how do you sell a book on leadership when only self-identified leaders are in the market to buy one? The “Everybody” in this title are likely not going to find their own way to this book since Barnes and Nobles might have a Leadership section, but they don’t have an Everybody section. That’s where you and I come in. We should read this book for our own growth in leadership skills, but we should also determine from the start to be a pass-through. Who in your circle is waiting—perhaps with despair—for an Al Jaber, or for their government to act on climate change? Who in your circle—whether on your team or in your constituency-- is waiting on YOU or your organization—with whatever official or positional standing you might have—to act? Now is the time to invite them into leadership.
“We won’t solve our toughest challenges,” Ed and Julia say in their Call to Action, “by doing more of what we’ve always done. Don’t take this book as a call to get busier or be more determined. Instead, shift your attention. The world needs more people stepping up to exercise leadership.”
P.S.-- I finished writing this review while on a plane from Hamilton, ON to Abbotsford, BC where I was scheduled to speak at A Rocha Canada’s National Conference. The man in the seat next to me leans over and reads off my screen. “Oh, you’re into climate change,” he says. “You know that’s fake. It’s just a way for rich people to make more money and for the Trudeau government to charge more taxes.” I eventually learn my seat mate works for the concrete industry, one of the biggest drivers of CO2 emissions globally. I smile at him, close my laptop, and say in my head, almost as a prayer: “Dear Ed and Julia. . .” I’m about to lead here.
For more information and to order When Everyone Leads, visit https://kansasleadershipcenter.org/when-everyone-leads/