The Second Chair

There are two chairs in every room where someone leads. In one sits the person who decides. In the other sit all the rest of us.

Almost every book about leadership is written for the first chair. This one is written for the second, the one most of us sit in for most of our lives. It starts from the assumption that leadership is a relationship, and that half of it is yours: what you do and do not do decides what the leadership becomes, every bit as much as what the manager does.

In twelve steps, the same twelve as in The Leadership Awakening but seen from the other side, you get tools for what is actually yours when someone else holds the power: finding what you can put on the table, living with not being told, seeing through a shell, saying it while it can still be said. The scenes are drawn from fifty years beside owners, boards and managers: a boy in gym shoes, a factory that did not exist, a conference call from a kitchen.

It does not blame the manager, and it does not blame you. It shows what is your half, and what you do with it. The book can be read on its own or alongside The Leadership Awakening, which is written for the person who leads.