Ed O'Malley is the President & CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC). KLC is a non-profit organization committed to fostering leadership for stronger, healthier, and more prosperous Kansas communities. We discuss how KLC is exploring the activity of leadership and its unique and innovative approach to education. My favorite quote from our chat - "Leadership is about intervening skillfully so that others become mobilized to take up the cause." Yes!
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Ed O'Malley is the President & CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC). KLC is a non-profit organization committed to fostering leadership for stronger, healthier, and more prosperous Kansas communities. We discuss how KLC is exploring the activity of leadership and its unique and innovative approach to education. My favorite quote from our chat - "Leadership is about intervening skillfully so that others become mobilized to take up the cause." Yes!
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Resources/Links to Discussion Topics:
practical wisdom Scott Allen.
Scott Allen :Hello, I am Scott Allen and thanks to my daughter Kate for developing the intro to the practical wisdom for leaders Podcast, where we offer a smart, fast paced discussion and all things leadership. My guests help us explore timely topics and incorporate practical tips to help you make a difference in how you lead and live. If you haven't done so, please click subscribe so you automatically seamlessly stay in the know when we publish new episodes. Likewise, please provide me with feedback. What do you like? What do you dislike? And what else would you like to know? And now today's show at O'Malley is my guest today and I am so excited because we have known each other and I believe since around 1996 1996 sounds
Ed O'Malley :about right Scotty it's good To be with you.
Scott Allen :Oh, thank you so much. And add is the CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center. And they in my mind, they are the preeminent developers of leadership, kind of in that community setting. Would that be an accurate way of saying it at O'Malley? Or would you How would you describe klc for our listeners,
Ed O'Malley :you know, Scott, we got our start 13 years ago. I found that klc 13 years ago, and the mission has always been about civic life in Kansas. So we're developing leadership at a large scale all across our state working with thousands of Kansans, who we you know, want to exercise leadership in the civic space to make their community stronger. As the year gone by we've worked more and more with the private sector as well in Kansas and beyond that, certainly our roots, our heart start there and community and civic life as you said,
Scott Allen :well and one thing that I love about the project To have this conversation to have the conversation with you. I've started each of these podcasts by sharing three words that come to mind for me when I think about that guest. And as I was reflecting on you, and our relationship and what I know of you, the three words that stood out for me were service. principled and inquisitive. How did I do? How did I do,
Ed O'Malley :Scott? That last one was inquisitive. Is that right? inquisitive?
Scott Allen :Yes, yes, you. I think it's a word. I'm pretty sure that's a word.
Ed O'Malley :I like it's a great word. And you know, this morning I woke up and I was thinking about the three words that define me and I came up with the exact same three Scott.
Scott Allen :We we are on the same wavelength. We're on the same wavelength.
Ed O'Malley :I love those words. And I hope to live up to those words most my days. So thank you for that.
Scott Allen :Well, you know, it's it's you're in acquisitiveness that that in my mind has really fueled some of the work that's happening at klc. So would you talk about that a little bit? I mean, I'd love to hear a little bit about the work, how you all think about developing leaders. And then maybe even what you've what you've learned. And maybe we just kind of go down those three paths for right now.
Ed O'Malley :I love it, Scott. And so a little bit of background. As you know, before I started the Canada's Leadership Center, I was in politics. I was a member of the Kansas House of Representatives. I was an aide before that to one of our state's governors. And I started klc, Kansas Leadership Center. I started klc, frankly, as a big skeptic, when it came to leadership development. And I say that and I share I share it because I think it's relevant to giving some background about the organization and some of my thoughts on on leadership and leadership development. I was a skeptic because I had been the business Fish, dairy have countless leadership programs early in my life. Yes. And I remember a specific moment I was on the floor of the Kansas House of Representatives. It was two o'clock in the morning. We had a massive education funding debate going on. We have a bit of a constitutional crisis in our state that moment. And there were protesters in the gallery and protesters out in the rotunda, the Capitol, and you can picture the scene. Two o'clock in the morning, and I remember thinking to myself, you know, looking around the chamber and thinking to myself, I have no idea what to do right now. Yes, and no, but I've gone through so much leadership training. And when I that moment, and this was before I started KFC at that moment, I began to realize that Well, a lot of that leadership training helped me get to that spot helped me become a member of the House of Representatives. It didn't really help me figure out what to do. So when we started klc, our mindset was very focused on we want to help people learn. What is it you actually do? What are the moves you make to help groups solve problems and seize opportunities? That's always been the kind of heart of the background. Does that give a little kind of cut panel picture of the org? I love it.
Scott Allen :No, I love it. I love it. That's great. Keep going. Yeah.
Ed O'Malley :So you know with that, so we begin klc, 13 years ago with that mindset, kind of a cynic mindset. I guess a fourth word, maybe could have been cynic. But and so we became to use your word very inquisitive about what what will it take them to create a place that doesn't just position somebody for some fancy job, some quote unquote, leadership job that actually prepares them to know the behaviors, the moves, the skills you make, to mobilize people. So that's what we're about at klc we work with Thousands of people a year, building their capacity to solve problems and to seize opportunities. A lot of times we actually like to talk about our work. I mean, we'll use the term leadership development, but we prefer to talk about it as we help people solve problems and seize opportunities faster, more effectively, more efficiently.
Scott Allen :I love it. I love it. And so what are some of the hallmarks or the principles that you're helping people learn as they think about some of the work that they're doing? They might be in formal positions of leadership in formal positions of leadership. Would you talk a little bit about your curriculum and some of the content that that's helping people do that work? That's great.
Ed O'Malley :Yeah, you bet. Scott. We and we spent the first almost year and a half really diagnosing the context of our civic life and creating this curriculum. We had a nice big healthy grant to get this thing started which allows you to spend that kind of time frankly, totally, it was a very nice situation. To be in and develop the framework. And let me just give you some highlights of it Scott, for for your listeners, it starts with some principles. We believe these to be truths about leadership. The first one is that leadership is an activity, not a position. Okay. To us, that's just key. We think it's one of the biggest mistakes people make when exercising leadership that they conflate leadership and authority. Maybe you and I can talk more about that today. Sure. So this idea that leadership is an activity, not a position, and just to just dwell on that one for a minute, Scott 1520 years ago, if you would have asked if you would have said, Hey, and I think leadership is an activity, not a position, I would have nodded my head. And I would have said yeah, you're right. It's It's It's kind of what you do. You know, that matters. And, and but I still would have been thinking and picturing in my head people who are in positional roles. Yes. So I would have acknowledged that. Yes, it's an activity but it It's an activity for people in those roles. That klc we're saying something different. We're saying that leadership and authority are two totally different things. Sometimes people in authority, exercise leadership, sometimes they don't. Sometimes people without authority, exercise leadership, sometimes they don't. Good. Anyway. So other principles we could talk about. But we also believe that leadership is incredibly risky. And therefore we think it's incredibly rare. So we think leadership is an activity. It's a risky one. And therefore it doesn't happen very often. We have a framework of competencies that we teach Scott that we can get into if it's useful to you and your audience. But we built a simple framework of a set of ideas that we share with thousands of folks a year now in Kansas and across the country and throughout the world.
Scott Allen :Well, there's two that I would love to hear you talk about, and that would be interviewing skillfully. How are you thinking about that concept today? And I would love for you to discuss, raise the hand Yeah, yeah. Can we talk about those two?
Ed O'Malley :You bet, Scott. So, as we were creating our curriculum, about, by the way our thinking early on was, in order to create a culture of leadership across our state, which is really what we're after, yep, we needed to zero in on a small set of powerful ideas. And this is true for anybody, if you're trying to create a culture of leadership in your company. in your organization, I believe this to be true as well. You have to zero in on a small set of idea. So I love it. We have this four competencies that make up our framework. intervene skillfully is one of those. Within each of these competencies, we have a few different ideas and raise the heat is one of the ideas inside this competency of interviewing skillfully. So let me just talk a little bit Scott about what we mean by intervene skillfully. leadership, we think involves a lot of diagnosis. It involves a lot of managing yourself. It involves a lot of energizing other people. And it also involves, you know, eventually a moment when you're going to intervene, you're going to, you're going to raise your hand, you're going to step up on the stage, you're going to, you know, open the door and walk into the meeting and you're going to do something that is an activity in action. Yep. And we think the world is full of people who are passionate advocates for whatever they believe them, but are pathetically incompetent at actually intervening skillfully, right. There's a difference between having passion and having knowledge of a subject. So yes, passionate advocate for for great marketing in your company or you could be a passionate advocate for early childhood education, whatever your thing is, and you could know everything there is to know about That thing, by the way, you can know the best practices you could attend all the conferences know that all the facts and figures, but you could still be pathetically incompetent at intervening to mobilize others to care also. So that that's what we mean by intervene skillfully. Leadership is about intervening skillfully so that others become mobilized to take up the cause. It's not intervening. So you can give a great speech and everybody can say, Wow, that was a great speech or intervening, so you can feel good about yourself for sticking up for what you believe in
Scott Allen :it. It's about mobilizing others. Yes, right.
Ed O'Malley :Yeah. And it connects Scott with this idea of, of raise the heat that language particularly comes from some good friends of ours. Marty Alinsky and Ron Heifetz at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, they're very close friends of ours and worked with us quite a bit in the early days of klc. What we mean what they mean what we mean by that idea of raise the heat is, we think for change to happen and leadership is always about change in some degree. For change to happen, there has to be enough disturbance, enough disequilibrium enough discombobulation to use a word that I heard you use for the first time when we were in our early 20s. But there has to be enough disturbance, right? To get people to even consider doing something different than they're doing now. And so leadership is often about raising that heat raising the disturbance raising the discomfort to get people into a productive zone. And I think a lot of times Scott Lewis last thing I'll say about that is, I think often people in authority roles a manager or a team lead a CEO. They often think their job is to lower the heat to calm everybody down. Get everyone calling Oh, it's all gonna be okay. I assure people that no, really nothing's wrong here. Think leadership is often about the opposite, but raising the heat enough holding people in that zone of real good, productive work. So real change can happen.
Scott Allen :And I love and I love how you frame that, that it's rare. So talk about that, because I would agree with you, I would agree with you that, that a number of people are painfully inadequate when it comes to intervening, that it's rare that you come across someone who, really across contexts can be successful. Yeah. And so talk about rare and do any examples come to mind for you that could highlight where you did see someone exercising leadership, even if it was in a moment in time. What are some of those instances for the listeners? Yeah,
Ed O'Malley :yeah, so let's play with this idea of rare and, and Scott, I know some of your listeners are also people who try to develop leadership and other people so that they're listening to themselves, but also to develop leadership and other so not only would we say leadership is rare, I actually think leadership development is rare. It's it's much easier to talk about developing leadership than other people. It's much harder to actually do something that leads to those other people literally exercising behaviors that are consistent with what we call mobilizing others. So I just think it's rare all around. to the to the point about leadership being rare. I guess the the way, I think about that, Scott is I know it's a trendy subject. I know there are a gazillion books on it. You and I have contributed to the gluttony
Scott Allen :we have guilty Yes, yes.
Ed O'Malley :But I just don't think you see very often people, mobilizing others to make money progress on their most daunting challenges? Hmm it to me that's what leadership is. It's mobilizing others to make progress on their most daunting challenges. I think what we see often are people doing things that allow people to kind of keep having the same problems keep having the same situation. Hmm. You know, my backgrounds in politics. How often do you see legislative legislators and governments kick the can down the road on whatever the problem is right often, often. And we see it in our companies to I mean, there's one company that we've been working with for quite a while and for the last two years, I feel like every time I meet with them, they say we're 18 months away from folding. Wow, because they have the issues. These issues they have have been around for 10 years, and if something significant doesn't change, they'll be around for another 10 years. I guess here's how, here's how I would encourage your listeners. So think about it. If you think of leadership as an activity, right, it's easy then for me at least to think of it a bit like something you and I both love Scott, which is baseball, right? Sure. So in baseball, the best hitters in the game, hit the ball three times out of 10. Yes. And so I like to think of these moments to exercise leadership as if you're a batter in a batter's box, and the pitches are coming at you. Okay? And so there's a moment to leave coming at you, you're in a staff meeting. And there's a moment to raise the heat, right, rather than lower the heat. Or there's a moment to engage some unusual voices, there's a moment to speak to loss, not try to pretend like there isn't lost with the change. There's a moment to do whatever this leadership stuff is that we're talking about. And I think more often than not, most people are like that batter that doesn't even see the fastball, the fastball comes and goes and then you They don't even see it. They don't even notice that there was a moment to leave. Yeah, then occasionally, I think and I speak for myself this way, too. I think it's rare. I think even the best that exercising leadership fail more than they succeed. I think maybe the best are like the best in baseball, they get it right three times out of 10. I think occasionally you see that moment to lead coming at you like a fastball. And occasionally you get the bad luck, your shoulder, you swing and you connect and you make something happen. But I think it's rare like that. I just I just don't think it's the norm. Although we want to believe it's the norm. I'm sorry for going on so long on this idea. No, I love it. I love it. I mean, I think I think I think what you're speaking to is the truth. I think I think it is rare. I think three out of 10 is probably unrealistic in this instance, right? Because and for the person in the batter's box to take the take the analogy a little bit further. They don't necessarily know what's coming at them. Right. Right. The fastball, is it a changeup? Is it a curve, is it a knuckle and so I think people are they're frozen. They're stalled. At times, and they don't know how to intervene skillfully in that moment. And I wrote a book once and in the foreword of the book, Peter Vail wrote a quote, and it was just beautiful. And it suggested the following, generally speaking, he said, unfortunately, no amount of sitting in a room talking about leadership, helps people get better at the activity of leading others. And I think that's a that's an Achilles heel of our work. Yeah, is that is that there's a lack of a practice field, or a lack of other ways of thinking about developing others. Oftentimes, it's kind of myopic, it's we're working with people's heads, and filling them with concepts. But that's kind of where the development ends. That's like literally taking a chef and filling their heads with with concepts and then expecting them to go back in the kitchen and be able to cook and at least in the kitchen is a finite set of variables with leadership, millions of variables, and let's just go back to To the baseball analogy for a minute, anybody who's coached literally softball or baseball will probably remember telling the kids, if you're gonna strike out, strike out swinging, don't strike out looking right. in baseball, you swing and miss three times you're out. Or if the ball is thrown down the middle of the bump calls at a strike, even if you don't swing, it happens three times, you're out. And you're all we're always telling kids and I coached a lot of baseball when my kids were younger, we're always telling kids if you're going to strike out, strike out swinging, not looking right, like take a chance, right? Yeah, but I think, you know, when you're up there in the batter's box, and I'll connect this to leadership in just a minute. If you strike out looking meaning the umpire calls you out, not because you swung but because it was called strike. When you go back to the dugout, something is available to you, that's not available to you if you strike out swinging, and that's an excuse. You can blame. You can blame the umpire. Okay, let me strikeout swinging. So if you decide you're going to intervene, yeah. If you decide you're going to intervene, you get the bat off your shoulder and you put your name on the ballot. You step up on the stage, you raise your hand in that meeting, you do something to intervene, and you fail. You're not successful at mobilizing people. You really don't have anybody to blame but yourself. Right? Yeah. But if you keep the bat on your shoulder, and you don't try to intervene, you can always blame something else. You can blame an umpire you can blame the context. You can blame history, you can blame the people who were there before you, you can, but you certainly can't blame yourself. And I think that's what happens a lot for people in everyday life. They choose not to leave because it's actually safer. We have them personally not to leave,
Scott Allen :which gets back to risky talk about why leadership is risky.
Ed O'Malley :I think it's my experiences. It's risky. When you're leading, you're disrupting things. Sure, and people would rather have you not disrupt things. And there are all types of historical examples to kind of help convey how risky leadership is. Look at Abraham Lincoln, look at Martin Luther King. These are examples of individuals who intervened in a in an incredibly disruptive way and obviously it was incredibly risky for them and they paid the ultimate price for it. But I think a not quite as ultimate price is paid. Almost anytime somebody exercises leadership, you know, you're,
Scott Allen :you're you put yourself out there, right. Yeah. And the batter, you're in the box and it's you.
Ed O'Malley :Yeah, exactly. Just you
Scott Allen :know, you've got the peanut gallery. Right.
Ed O'Malley :Right. Yeah. So I think most people they that they this inherently kind of know it's risky, so they try to avoid the batter's box. At all costs, you know, they, they just don't want to get an A then if they get in there, they keep the bat on their shoulder and hope they get the wallet to get up, get a walk, they get to get the first base, but by just walking. So I think it is risky. Which is why we think it's so rare. And oh my gosh, it's so needed though. Now more than ever, perhaps do we need more people who understand how to mobilize others to make progress on really daunting challenges?
Scott Allen :So add, what have you learned in the last It was 13 years, correct? Yeah, that's right. What have you learned? Are you as much of a cynic? Have you seen? Have you seen with your eyes movement? Are you convinced at this point? Are you still a little bit skeptical? What take us take us there?
Ed O'Malley :Yeah, I've learned a lot. And I'm still a cynic about a number of things. And I've seen a lot of really neat things happen. One of the things I've Learn as it is possible to create cultures of leadership inside organizations, inside companies, inside communities. We've done this long enough now we've had enough research done about us. We've done research ourselves. We've had other research funded by other people about us. We've had enough research now to confirm that you can create cultures I would say cultures of leadership. But what what I've learned is that the way you do that isn't by picking a few people in that company or organization for leadership development, which is what most companies organizations do, they pick a few people who are either already at the top or, or people who have been identified as key candidates to be at the top of the organization. That's not a good way to create a culture of leadership. If you want a culture of leadership. You need to build the capacity of people up and down and across the organization to exercise leadership. And you'll you're really only going to do that if you believe leadership is an activity that's not connected to authority. If you think leadership and authority are the one in the same, you you won't invest in building the leadership capacity of all your people. So I've learned I've learned that's a big learning and it's been an exciting one to know that a you can create cultures of leadership and be the way you do it is by building capacity at scale across your organization or community. Hmm.
Scott Allen :Well, and and, well, let me say it this way, what advice do you have for leadership educators? And then number two, for those who want to develop their abilities to exercise leadership? what suggestions do you have for them, maybe two or three for each, each group.
Ed O'Malley :So Scott, for the for this first group, this advice for leadership educators, three, three things number one, all set of powerful and provocative have ideas don't, don't throw every new leadership book at your people zero in and be loyal to a small set of ideas. Number two, you've got to think about scale. You have to think about working, building the capacity of enough people, no matter where you would expect that if enough people began to behave more consistently with those small, that small set of provocative ideas, you would see a culture emerge. And the third to the first a small set of powerful provocative ideas. The second is think at scale. And the third thing on my mind for this group is you have to build leadership development around a cause, around a problem around an opportunity. I just don't think many people learn to change their behaviors because of theoretical conversations. I mean, you know, you and I might dig that kind of thing but but I think if you You're trying to build leadership and other people, you've got to make it relevant to something that's keeping them up at night right now.
Scott Allen :You know, that's the heat. Right? That's what he
Ed O'Malley :that's he and and you know, we talked about raising the heat is a part of leadership raising the heat is also a part of leadership education. All right, love it because you're about behavior change, you want their behaviors to change, therefore we've got to raise the heat enough to get those behaviors to change. So does that make sense for that first one? It does.
Scott Allen :Yeah, that's great. That's great. That's perfect. For me, personally, I want to develop my capacity to exercise leadership. Where do I start? What do I need to be thinking about what's on my radar?
Ed O'Malley :Well, first and foremost, you need to read every one of Scott Allen's books.
Scott Allen :Oh, that's brilliant. Right there. Right. There you go. Especially the one for charge nurses.
Ed O'Malley :I have that one's got I think what I would say is, well, I some of it is similar to the last advice. zero in on a small set of ideas. I you probably know a lot of these people like I do Scott who are just so I mean, like they're leadership junkies, right? They read every new book that comes out there. And what I experienced those people is like popcorn, from one idea to the next from one paradigm to the next. And they're kind of a buzz and all this stuff. Yes. You don't mean?
Scott Allen :Yes. Well, it's in your description right now reminds me of the film up with the dog who is constantly going scoring, scoring, scoring, and it's it's something new, and as a result, there's so much noise, nothing ever comes into clarity. And as a result, nothing ever really no foundation has ever really built. So that's what I love about your small set of powerful and provocative ideas or concepts. Then we can focus on and truly develop.
Ed O'Malley :Yeah. Well, so yeah. So I think I think that'd be my advice to just an individual who wants to develop their leadership, we find a framework you like, and just focus on it. You know, I mean for years, and, and because, look, most of these leadership ideas are the same. I mean, there are very few new I don't think we created anything new. I think we packaged some things in some ways. They're useful. we simplified some things but nothing, nothing's new. The second piece of advice I would have for the the average person who wants to develop their own leadership is you have to have the mindset of practicing. And I know you have it, it's way too Scott that you just like my my son who plays basketball is out on the driveway, taking hundreds of shots a day working on his game and he's working on little nuance things with his shot. Yes. Yes. And over and over and over. You know, he was trying to perfect the backspin. He had a little too much side rotation, all these little things. I think leadership is the same way. I mean, how do you take an idea? Maybe the idea is, I want to spend more time and diagnosis, more jump to solution. You can practice that. I mean, you can you can at every meeting you're in, you can practice. Did I jump to conclusions? Or did I ask questions that take us deeper into diagnosis? And then you can journal about, you know, how did you do, but I just think you have to have an attitude of practice.
Scott Allen :I love it. Well, and for many of us, we have 810 hours a day, whether that's at home, right, especially now, because many of us are at home. Yeah. Or whether it's at work, to exercise leadership. And it's a practice field. Both contexts are a practice field for us. If we have that mindset, which I absolutely love. I love that framing. And that way of thinking about exercising leadership and practicing leadership,
Ed O'Malley :you know, and one more frame that could be useful to people because I love that too. Scott and I love You helped me advance my thinking over the years about the concept of drills. And just like, just like if I'm learning how to shoot a left handed layup, there are drills I can do to teach me how to do that. I think another frame that could be useful for your listeners to think about is the frame of experimentation. You know, we often are encouraging people to think about leadership as an activity of experimentation. And if you think of it as running experiments, it can lessen the pressure, you know, I'm in this next meeting, I'm going to try to get sewn. So to speak up a little more, I'm going to see what happens if I invite these other people into this meeting. And if you think like a scientist, you know, experiment has a hypothesis. You look for data. You use that data to inform your next hypothesis, your next experiment. It's just a really we find comfortable way of thinking About the exercise of leadership that can be quite powerful.
Scott Allen :And it takes some of the pressure off, right. I mean, I think a lot of lot of leaders, especially right now, and kind of the context, we're in with the COVID-19, a lot of leaders are putting pressure on themselves to have all the answers, when in my mind, the activity right now is also helping the organization work through the right questions, and identifying those correct questions to work. So that we can work it run experiments so we can get some data so we can learn and then just kind of continue the cycle. So I couldn't agree with you more.
Ed O'Malley :Yeah. Well, I think often the experience when exercising leadership and again, by that what I mean, I think you mean to Scott, what what I mean is when trying to mobilize other people to make progress on daunting challenges or big opportunities when trying to do that none of us know exactly how to do it, right. I mean, if we think of it as we're experimenting to figure out what will mobilize those other people, which is different than thinking, What idea can I come up with to solve this problem? Yes. Right.
Scott Allen :That's a heck of a lot of pressure that ladder.
Ed O'Malley :Yeah. Well, and COVID-19 is a great example because nobody, nobody, no person can solve it. No, it's about there's
Scott Allen :just a lot of experiments happening right now.
Ed O'Malley :Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, and a lot of those experiments, while there are plenty of experiments in the experiment, plenty of experiments happening related to the vaccine. A lot of the experiments are about mobilizing a world frankly, yes. differently. You know, so it's all about experiments, social distancing, is an experiment stay at home orders are is an experiment.
Scott Allen :Yes. Yes. Can we plan and hopefully that will flatten the curve, but you're exactly right. No authority figure has the answer right now that can solve This dilemma we're facing. And so I love it. I love it. I think we're close on time. And so I have this little bit of a lightning round at the end. And so I just want to get some some some answers from you about some very, very critical questions. So Ed, what are you streaming right now? What is the family's streaming or what are you streaming right now that other than Joe exotic that that is teaching you about leadership?
Ed O'Malley :Oh, okay. What am I streaming that's teaching me about leadership that you change the question there the end what I did now is the British baking show.
Scott Allen :Well, I imagine there's people I think you're sizing leadership or maybe it's rare in that instance, I don't know yeah,
Ed O'Malley :I'm not really sure yet, but we're having a good time as a family with that. We're about to start the Chicago bowls documentary that night last night. So actually what what I'm more connected to my work. I'm listening to Do a lot of podcasts right now about writing about creative writing. And I'm noticing a lot of the similarities between the creative writing process and the exercise of leadership. So that's something that I'm seeing a lot of times streaming or listening to lately.
Scott Allen :I love it. I love it. And how about how about reading? Is there something that you've been reading that you've really enjoyed? lately? It doesn't have to be about just leadership. But But is there a book that stands out for you in recent months?
Ed O'Malley :You know, I read a lot and I love it. And I always have multiple books going at the same time. And, you know, of course, we're in the middle of the COVID-19 social isolation is social isolation error. Right now, I happen to be reading Robinson Crusoe, which is about trapped on an island and also reading another book about a guy who took this solo pilgrimage all through Europe. So I'm really well read at
Scott Allen :exercising existence. Yes. Yes, it's touted as sustaining existence. Well, we'll add, I know that that every one of our of our listeners, if we come back to those three words, a service and the service you and your organization that Kansas Leadership Center is doing for Kansas. I think that that fits beautifully. A principled, I think what you are trying to accomplish is helping individuals better exercise leadership, and what a noble, what a noble, objective and inquisitive we could continue this conversation for a long time and we will revisit this at some point, I am excited to do another episode with you. So I appreciate your time. Where can people learn more about you, your writing and klc?
Ed O'Malley :Sure, thank you, Scott. If they head to the Kansas Leadership Center website, which is simply Kansas leadership center.org. You can find out all you want to know about about klc Or me, you can find links to my social media and ways to contact me and our team. And we'd love to have you and Scott, it's great to be with you. Love the podcast, love your work and have for decades now. You're doing a great job, and so proud to be a guest on the new podcast.
Scott Allen :Awesome. Well, thank you. I do have a wonderful day. Keep doing great things out there in the world. And we will talk soon. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Scotty. After each episode, I take a couple days and I just reflect and this conversation gave me a lot to reflect upon. So Ed talked about his truths when it came to leadership, that it's an activity, not a position, that it's risky. And that leadership is in fact rare. loved how klc is framing leadership and how they're defining the work. They say that it's about solving problems and seizing opportunities. They also say that leadership is about making progress. On our most daunting challenges, and mobilizing others to take up the cause as well. Now, I loved what Ed said about what learners can do to better prepare to lead. He talked about having an attitude of practice that really every day, each one of us has an opportunity to practice leadership when we're at work, or when we're at school, or we're engaging in any other group which with which we care. We can be practicing leadership. He also talked about having a mindset of experimentation. So that leadership in many ways is about experimentation, and experimenting and running experiments to see if we can help the work of the group move forward. My final observation from this conversation is the importance of language. I really love how klc is framing the concept of leadership. I love the language they're using, and so For me, I'm going to continue to reflect upon the language I'm using. So that I frame these concepts, these ideas, these thoughts in a way that's useful for others. As always, thank you for checking in. We appreciate you listening. Have a great day. You have been listening to the practical wisdom for leaders podcast. If you liked what you heard, please share it with others and let them know what we're up to. And one last quick reminder to click Subscribe so you know when we publish new episodes, and of course, we'd love to hear your feedback. You can stay in touch with me by visiting www Scott J. Allen dotnet or any number of social media platforms, be well be safe and make a difference wherever you are on this beautiful planet. And now, here's Kate's twin sister Emily, with the outro
Unknown Speaker :Oh,
Emily Allen :You've been listening to phronesis practical wisdom with Scott Allen