Ed O_Malley Echoes Ted Lasso_S _Be Curious Not Judgemental_

This week's episode of the Empowering Leaders podcast comes from Kansas in the U.S., Ed

O'Malley, a former elected official in Kansas who left his role to start the Kansas Leadership

Center that has impacted tens of thousands of people in his local community.

Ed is a fascinating and curious person.

He talks a lot about leadership being disappointing people at a rate that they previously can't

absorb.

He also makes a really clear distinction between what is a role of authority and exercising

leadership.

And just because you're in a role of authority doesn't mean that you choose to exercise leadership

or have the skills to do it, and that leadership is actually a skill that can be learned and

an exercise in itself.

He talks about the challenge of the gun laws in the United States, his passion for a formal

global collaboration of leadership programs around the world to get together and support

a more creative and collaborative leadership.

You'll also hear him reference Ted Lasso's brilliant line, be curious, not judgmental.

Ed O'Malley is a fascinating person who's doing great work in this space, and I'm sure

you're going to enjoy listening to it.

It's conversations like this one with Ed O'Malley that form the basis for our passion with the

work we do at Alita, particularly our Alita Connect program.

Love you to check it out.

Head to alitacollective.com.

We are on a weekly basis curating groups of people from around the globe, people like

Ed O'Malley into perspective.

Groups of five or six to learn, to share, to connect, and to collaborate, whether you're

from the world of the arts or starting a small business or from education or sport.

The idea of collaborative learning is something we are incredibly passionate about and seeing

the positive learning and personal development that we feel really passionate about with

Alita Connect.

Love you to book a discovery call.

Head to alitacollective.com.

Huge thanks, as always, to our great friends at Tempa, Jason Nicholas and his team from

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At a time where our trust in elected officials around the globe is at an all-time low, a

leadership story out of Kansas and the United States is a beacon of positivity for me for

what is possible.

Ed O'Malley's passion for the power of positive leadership

led him to founding the Kansas Leadership Center in 2007

and serving as its president and CEO for the next 15 years

following a four-year stint in public office

in the Kansas legislature.

The Kansas Leadership Center is a not-for-profit organization

that has engaged more than 15,000 participants

across 44 states, 62 countries,

with 98% highly recommending the program to their colleagues.

Independent research has shown the benefits to the community are many.

A more engaged workforce, employees more committed,

and a sense of greater hope for the future.

Ed, great to catch up with you today.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks, Luke.

It's great to be with you.

I'm excited for the conversation.

Ed, I mentioned our trust in elected officials is at an all-time low,

close to zero in my mind.

That's why I love reading about your story,

using the power of your position to create something

that's having a really meaningful, positive impact from what I can see.

Tell us a bit about your founding of the Kansas Leadership Center.

Yeah, Luke, thanks.

You know, I mean, trust is such a key part of leadership.

I bet we'll dig into that just a little bit.

But I came from politics.

I used to be a member of the Kansas House of Representatives,

as you mentioned in the introduction.

I resigned my seat to start the Kansas Leadership Center,

believing that the quality and the quantity of leadership

in a community or in a company is really a key determinant

to whether there's going to be some kind of change.

Whether there's going to be success,

whether there's going to be enough bonds of trust

among diverse people to do important work.

And so those two things, the quality of leadership

and the quantity of leadership,

wanting to get more of both is what led me to leave politics,

start the Kansas Leadership Center.

We had some wonderful philanthropic dollars to launch the center.

And now 16, 17 years later,

it's worked with thousands and thousands of folks around Kansas,

but also around the globe, including in Australia,

which is why it's so great to be connecting with you today, Luke.

Yeah, likewise, Ed.

And you mentioned your role in politics.

You describe yourself, I think, as a moderate Republican.

And just zooming out for a moment, Ed, to me,

I'm a bit disturbed by the extreme divide that we seem to see

around the world at the moment.

We've got other countries still invading sovereign nations.

You know, in the U.S., you've got a former president currently indicted on over,

I think, 100 charges.

Are you optimistic about leadership or are you concerned?

Yeah, Luke, it's very concerned.

And I think a key is to recognize that people in authority roles,

sometimes they exercise leadership, but most of the time they don't.

To me, leadership is an activity.

It's something that happens.

And oftentimes people in authority,

are really crummy at exercising leadership.

They have a lot of expectations on them

from the very people who gave them their authority.

And to me, those expectations are almost always

to make things better for them, right?

For the people who gave the person the authority,

to make things be easier for their faction in the community or in the nation.

And I think leadership,

the exercise of leadership is disruptive.

It is often about disappointing people

more than it is about telling people what they want to hear.

So, I'm really worried about the state of formal authority in our world today.

And if we look primarily to those individuals in the United States and Australia

and other countries, if we look to them to be the source of all of our leadership,

if we look to them to be the source of all of our leadership,

If we look to them to be the source of all of our leadership,

leadership, I'm afraid that it could be a really messy future. I think they have a role to play,

but I really believe in ground up leadership as absolutely critical.

I love that you're making that distinction, Ed, isn't it, between authority and leadership,

just because you're in a position of authority, as you say, doesn't mean you get to exercise what

we think is great leadership. And often that's what's lacking at the moment, isn't people

finding a way into authority without the skills that you're talking about, that I'm passionate

about as well, is that ability to have positive impact, that community-based leadership. And I

know you're really passionate about this thing. You don't need authority to exercise leadership

at the same time. It's one of your strong beliefs, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. And look, I know for a lot of people, if they haven't thought about this before,

this could be really hard to wrap their arms around, but authority is critical. And for a lot

of problems, all you need is authority to make the right decision.

To do the right thing. But on the toughest challenges, the biggest challenges facing

a community, an organization, a sports team, you have so much experience in athletics. The biggest

challenges take leadership from the many. The team captain is a critical role that often

doesn't have enough authority to solve something all by himself or all by herself.

So this idea...

The idea that authority is critical, but leadership is needed from the many,

including those without authority, I think is quite liberating,

but it is very counterintuitive to a whole lot of people.

And there's one thing that puzzles us Australians here, and I'm sure you've heard this question

before, but you look to the US and you see 600 mass shootings a year, 50 people a day die by

firearm in the US. So I'm talking to you in Kansas today. It's one of the...

It's one of the world's most important capitals of the world. Is there any hope in your mind

that you can get a shift in leadership to make an impact on what just seems to be a

crazy thing that unfolds day after day in America?

Yeah, it is crazy. And I, of course, I'm familiar with the Australian history and its approach

to acting so quickly years ago to counteract the presence of so many...

weapons that could contribute to the type of mass destruction that we see way too often here.

It's incredibly frustrating. And to me, if we think of that as a case study,

it's a sad case study, but I think it's a relevant one because what I know from exercising

leadership, from studying leadership and being involved in civic life,

is we're not going to convince opposing factions with our favorite talking points.

If I'm in favor of more gun control, this is one of those things where just talking about my point

of view louder isn't going to convince anybody on the other side. And that's what's happening

right now is almost like these factions talk past each other. And I think it's a good example

because to actually talk together and sit down at the same table and try to find some common ground,

frankly, it's what's needed. But it's also so hard because we are so polarized.

It's very difficult for people to sit down with the opposing faction and be able to explain as to

why they did that, why they sat down with those people who are the quote-unquote enemy. And I

think in the gun debate, the mass violence debate, the mass shooting debate in America, you see

the worst of what happens when there aren't enough people who have the ability to do that. And I think

in the gun debate, the mass shooting debate, the mass shooting debate in America, you see the worst of

what happens when there aren't enough people who have the ability to do that. And I think in the

exercise leadership, even in situations where they don't have enough authority on their own.

And Ed, for me, one of the big problems in the world now is that we can't even seem to agree

on simple facts anymore and right or wrong, what's true and false. And one of the strange things I

like to do from here in Australia is occasionally flick between CNN and Fox News on an issue like

this, you know, on gun control. And it's not alternative opinion. It's alternative facts that

are being passed down the line. And then you get the algorithms of social media that reinforce the

bias that you've already got. I mean, we used to have great debates, didn't we? You know,

you're a moderate Republican, you'd sit down with a Democrat friend over dinner and you might have

a debate and you maybe would shift some ground back into the middle and find common ground.

And it feels like, you know, if you're left or right here in Australia or whatever side you

tend to lean towards, now we want to cancel each other. Now we want people removed. We haven't

got that ability to find middle ground. I mean, is that as big a problem as I'm articulating it

there? Oh, I think it's bigger than you're articulating. I think it's a massive problem.

And two things come to mind, Luke. One of them is the presence of our modern technology, which

I can't begin to fully understand or appreciate, but clearly the presence of social media and,

you know, the 24-7 digitally connected world is making it harder to agree on a common set of

facts, making it harder to have a common narrative of what's going on, which to me is all the more

reason why we need a lot more people who have the skill to exercise leadership, the skill to

better diagnose situations and engage people of differing opinions to come to the table,

maybe in the past, you could solve a really tough community, civic, political problem with one or

two people who really understood how to exercise leadership. I think today you can't. Today you

need a lot of people, frankly, in all of the different factions who have the ability to

exercise leadership. And what that means is that every time I have exercised leadership, I'm

angering my people. You know, when I was in politics, when I look back and I think about

the moments that I was exercising leadership, which I think are few and far between for all of

us, but in those moments, I was angering my fellow Republicans. You know, I was upsetting them. I was

convincing them they had to evolve. I wasn't bashing the opposition Democrats. You know,

so I think that's what leadership is. Leadership is disappointing

your own people at a rate they can't absorb. And in this moment, we need a lot more people

who have the ability and the skill to do that because of the rapid changing world we're in.

And Ed, I love the language you use, exercising leadership. And often you're right. It's the hard

decisions. It's not the popular decisions. And maybe an easy way to understand it, because it's

one of my favorite topics, is going back on the home front, isn't it? You're a father of three and

married to your child. You're a father of three and married to your child. You're a father of three and

I read Ed, but often the leadership on the home front are the most unpopular decisions too,

aren't they? And they start from the youngest age. It's time to go to bed. It's time to,

you know, pick up your clothes off the bedroom floor. Can you help out at dinner time? I mean,

they're not popular calls on the home front either, are they? But you expand that out.

It's an exercise, isn't it? It's a choice, but there's some skill involved in it as well that

can be taught. And that's why I describe what you're doing as a beacon of hope,

to take politics into expanding that exercise and that skill around the community so we can

come together. It's a very worthwhile thing that you're doing it. Well, thank you, Luke. And I think

your example about the home front is a great one. And one of the dynamics at the home front in our

families is like, my kids, they didn't give me my authority to be their dad. I just am their dad.

And I can make them super, super angry, and I'm still going to be their dad. But for a lot of

people in authority roles, if they anger the people who gave them their authority too much,

those people will choose somebody else to be their president, their elected official, their

quote unquote leader, which is why I think it's just dangerous in these polarized times to expect

people to rely on folks in these authority roles to have all the answers, because they are so

beholden to those who gave them their authority. It's hard for them to operate otherwise. And they

need though, they also need help with learning the skills of how do you disappoint your own people

at a rate they can absorb. That's what leadership is all about. It's tricky, but we all got to learn

it.

And then one of the things that I read about with you is the link and the passion between the two.

I mean, it's a passion between better health and better leadership. And you're now serving on the

Kansas Health Center, I understand. And that funds a lot of the Kansas Leadership Center.

The research is pretty evident, isn't it? If you get that exercise of leadership expanded in the

community, people are healthier, they live better lives. Can you explain a bit of that research?

Yeah, you bet. So I run the Kansas Health Foundation now, and people look at health in

our name, and they might assume,

we focus on health care. We really don't. We focus on those interventions that lead to healthier

people, healthier populations. And what we know is that the biggest determinant of someone's health

is their economic status. It's how much money they have and how stable they are with their

financial situation. The second biggest determinant of someone's health,

is their level of educational attainment. Have they had the opportunity to go to university,

to go beyond the bare basics? Other key determinants of health are things like,

how safe is the neighborhood in which they live? Well, those things like the safety of a

neighborhood, the educational opportunities, and certainly things like economic mobility,

it takes a lot of leadership from a lot of people to create those

conditions so that people can live healthy, thriving lives. So that's the connection we see in

lots of the research that backs that connection up, the connection between the quality and quantity

of leadership in a community or an organization, and ultimately the health and vitality of the

members of that community or organization. And then I mentioned in the intro that more

than 15,000 participants have gone through the leadership center that you've founded, and

you're passing on that leadership. So I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good

point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good

point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.

Great values around what we see modern leadership looking like, which is more empathy and more

collaboration and moving away from hierarchy. And you talk about that old model being bankrupt,

where leadership development programs in the past, they were aimed at two or three people who were

going to take on that next role of authority that you speak about. Can you explain that grass

movement community-based model, the sort of impact that you're seeing in your community on the back

of it?

The distinction is so important. Most leadership development programs in America, and I've had a

chance to spend a lot of time in Australia, I think it's fair to say that most of the leadership

development programs in Australia also are really about building the next group of authority

figures. That's really how they got started, these leadership development programs. And there's

nothing wrong with that per se, but we took a totally different approach.

Our approach was saying, whether somebody is going to develop in their career to be the next CEO of

such and such organization or the next head of such and such political party, that doesn't matter to

us. What matters to us is that we are building the capacity of lots of people, whether they are on

the management track or not, to be more skilled at exercising leadership. It's a totally different

distinction.

After 17 years now and 15,000 people, we have enough experience to talk about the results

of that. You talked about trust earlier, Luke. One of the things I'm so proud of is that the

research is now showing in organizations that have taken this approach to leadership development,

building the leadership capacity of everyone in the system, not just the people on the

management track.

And I think that's really important. I think that the most important thing is that people are more

open to change. People trust what's going on more. Some of the other things that they see happen when

they build the leadership capacity of everyone is that people are more open to change. Change is

hard. And just to get people open to it is a big first step. But people, these cultures are

naturally more open to change. Two other big findings that have emerged from organizations and

communities that have saturated themselves with this type of leadership development. Things become

more equitable. Power is shared more broadly. More people have voice at the table, which leads to

better decisions and more buy-in on those decisions. And the last thing, and this one surprised

us, Luke, but as an athlete, you know the importance of taking care of yourself. And if you're not at

your best come game day, you're not going to be able to do your best. You're not going to be able to do your

best for the team. These cultures also dramatically increase the value for self-care and

recognizing that exercising leadership is hard and people need to take care of themselves so

they're able to effectively exercise leadership, effectively disappoint people at a rate they can't

absorb, because that's hard work. So I love that that finding came about. It surprised us, but it's

an important one. Disappoint people at a rate they can't absorb. That's a fantastic

way to talk about leadership in lots of ways. Exercising leadership. I love the language you

use. And just to share with you for a moment, it's the world that we're really passionate about too

and the work we're doing with a leader and our Leader Connect program is really similar to what

your language is. And that is we're connecting Ed O'Malley from Kansas, who has had a great

presence in this style of leadership with someone from the world of the arts or with a sports person

or with someone in commerce or industry.

And finding that synergy and a bit like you describe, we see those positive ripples as being

a great benefit because hopefully in that shared environment where we facilitate these groups

around the globe, people do exercise better leadership and we learn from each other in a

really powerful way. And so it has been really interesting to listen to your story and to see

that happen at a state-based level, to have a center like this funded by the state, improving

better health outcomes. And yeah, really love the synergy.

Well, thank you, Luke. It's great to share some of the things we've learned here.

I know there's so much good leadership development work happening in Australia. I've had a chance to

connect with a lot of folks there over the years. And I love the work you're doing at spreading

these positive messages. I think leadership, if we assume it's easy, I think we're not going to

do ourselves any favors. But if we assume it's something we have to work at, which is why we

like to talk about the exercise of leadership.

Practice of leadership. You had to practice a lot back in your day, right? You went to practice

all the time. You went to training all the time. We think leadership is like that. We have to

keep developing those skills. And I appreciate how you are helping so many people practice

leadership and get better at their practice of leadership.

We love the term success leaves clues. And we've seen these common traits around what

modern leadership looks like in a positive form in our space. And we start with that

idea. One of the things that I've learned is that leadership is not just about the

dimensions of leadership we talk about in our world, Ed, is the idea of self-leadership and that

it's hard to lead someone else unless you have an idea of leading yourself. What does that term

mean to you? I love it. It makes me think about when you're on the airplane and they tell you to

put on your mask first before you help those around you. That if we're not putting ourselves

into the position to be most effective, it's going to be really hard to help mobilize others.

So I love it. We talk about

managing self. And what we notice is often in the toughest challenges, we're getting emotionally

triggered. And part of exercising leadership is controlling those triggers and making very

conscious choices about how we engage and intervene. So I like your term of self-leadership,

though. That's good. I might steal it. The next dimension I want to ask you about is

how do we go about positively impacting others in our environment? And your life story is that

you were an elected official. You saw a gap and you went through a lot of things. And you're

founded this leadership center in Kansas. It's a great positive impact story. But maybe just on

the day-to-day, we see now really great leaders who exercise leadership conscious on a day-by-day

basis how they impact people positively. How have you gone about that? To me, what I'm noticing

right now, and especially because of how heavy things are in our world, I think the more people

who can help curate, help...

Develop a positive, shared, bold vision. People, I think, are craving positive,

shared, bold visions. It's something different than offering a bold vision,

but somebody who can help a group come up with a bold vision so it's shared. That's something that

my sense is needed more. And I would encourage your listeners to be thinking more about

if we had more time, we could talk through some of those steps. How do you engage others,

not to sell them on your bold vision, but to help them craft and inform a shared

bold vision? Feels critical in these moments. Yeah, it's a great point, Ed. It does lead to

the next dimension. And maybe you can expand on that. How do you go about creating and sharing

your vision, which is a bold vision, isn't it? It's about community leadership and teaching

thousands and thousands of people to exercise leadership in a better way. And then that's

spreading across the world. And I think that's a great point. And I think that's a great point.

And then creating better health outcomes and better decision-making, it's bold. How have you

gone about sharing that and making the impact you want? Yeah. What comes to my mind, Luke, is

I think we're often, especially in public life, we're arguing about our preferred strategy

rather than talking about our collective purpose or goal. And my sense is,

those who are most effective at exercising leadership, their vision is about the big goal

that a lot of people can get excited about. So like now at the Kansas Health Foundation,

our vision is for Kansas to lead the nation in health. The 50 states in the US are ranked every

year, one to 50. I can't bump into anybody who disagrees with the vision of us leading the nation

in health. We might disagree, but we're not going to disagree. And I think that's a great point.

We might disagree with how to make that happen. But if we can first agree on the vision,

well, then we're halfway there. And so one piece of advice I would have for those

wanting to exercise more leadership is to cast a vision that others can see themselves as a part

of. Debate the strategies later, but get them on board with the vision first. And when you get to

the point of debating strategies, be willing to let go of your own and embrace some of the

theirs. Focus on the vision. Focus on the goal. Be less loyal to your preferred strategy.

Yeah. Well said. It's a great way to think about it, isn't it? You can get halfway there on the

common ground, which is, as we said, a little bit harder in the modern world than it perhaps

used to be. But I love your thoughts on that. Curiosity is a word that comes up a lot in our

world, Ed. And we see these really successful modern leaders are so curious and through that

curiosity, they're constantly learning and developing. Does that resonate with you?

Yeah, it does. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't

know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. If Ted Lasso has taken off in Australia like it

has in Australia. Sure has. What a great show. Oh, it's such a great show. But there's that

one episode, you know, where he talks about being curious, not judgmental. And I just thought that

was a great line. And it describes to me so much about leadership to be curious, not judgmental.

One of the problems, I think, with our current world is because we're so polarized,

um, most people in one faction have a lot of judgments about people in the other faction,

or, or if we just want to talk about politics, you know, conservatives have a lot of judgments

they make about progressives and, and vice versa. And I think those who exercise leadership

suspend their judgments and don't let themselves get emotionally triggered by those,

that rhetoric. And they instead get very curious about why somebody is doing what they're doing and,

and, and how they might engage with that person to help them maybe do something different.

Curiosity feels like a key ingredient to me for exercising effective leadership.

Yeah. Well said again. And for those that haven't seen Ted Lasso, I encourage you to go and do it.

You're not going to be disappointed. And talk about real life imitating art. I know a lot of,

you know, senior coaches in leagues,

around the world, you know, reference and use Ted Lasso and, and, and see that as really the style

of leadership that they want to, to exercise. It's a, it's fascinating. And the shift in leadership

in sport ed is profound, you know, from the era I played in where it was just command and control

and hierarchy and you got yelled at and you either, you know, coped or you didn't, you know,

the Ted Lasso approach seems to be without even being serious for a moment. It's genuinely a

healthier way of doing things.

Yeah. So the next generation want to work collaboratively and they want to be thought

of and cared for in that way, which is a profound shift and a positive shift as well. Communicating

with clarity is another dimension I want to ask you about. And you've got a great way. You're an

author of four books and your latest book is, is brilliant. I was having a read of it when everyone

leads and you talk about that language very, very consistently. How have you gone about

communicating your message? Yeah. The word intentionality comes to mind.

And I'm the type of person who likes to think out loud.

I don't know what I think until I start talking half the time.

And I've had to learn that in moments when I'm trying to intervene, to exercise leadership, to mobilize a group of people to think differently, to do something differently, I need to be very intentional about what I'm communicating and why I'm communicating.

And I think of it a lot as like an experimental mindset that as we engage with others, we're trying to exercise leadership to have a hypothesis about what I think is going on and what I think my intervention is going to do.

And then to evaluate, well, did it do it?

Did it work?

Was I successful?

Most of the time, I'm not.

But that's okay.

Learn from it.

Then intervene again intentionally.

But leadership is all about communication.

I think the key is intentional communication.

Strategic conscious choices is the key.

How important has collaboration been for you, Ed?

Yeah, I think it's massive.

And what I've learned over the years is collaboration is really easy when the stakes are low.

But when the stakes are high and maybe resources are limited.

Then collaboration is hard.

And I've seen lots of situations where people begin by collaborating.

But then when the things get hard, the collaboration breaks down.

To me, real leadership is looking at a situation, knowing the factions, whether the factions in the company or the factions in the community or the factions in the state or the factions in the nation.

Knowing the factions, you need to come together.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And then creating the conditions for collaboration among those factions.

So going back to the gun violence debate in America, there is no table right now where those factions are together in a productive way.

And I think until that table exists, I don't know how we make progress on that horrific issue.

But that's what leadership does.

It creates the conditions for the right factions to be together, to collaborate.

and find a way forward.

I love your point, isn't it?

It's easy when the stakes are low, isn't it?

But you raise the bar and it just gets significantly harder,

even though we might have the intention to want to collaborate.

So it's a great point.

I've been asking these two questions of everyone I've sat down with,

and I love talking to you from Kansas in the U.S. today

and your unique take on what community leadership looks like.

Who's been the greatest leader in your life?

Oh, wow.

I mean, so many, but one that comes to mind, perhaps, Luke,

because of your athletic background, but a phenomenal coach in this part

of the world, a man named Bill Snyder, was the head football coach

at Kansas State University.

You all might know that we're kind of crazy about college sports

here in America, and Coach Snyder became a dear friend and mentor,

and it was a classic turnaround from, like, the worst program in America

to one of the best programs in America.

And what I learned from him was the power of taking a long time horizon,

of realizing that we have to have a sense of urgency,

but we also have to stay at this for years and just keep –

he used to say, you've got to keep just sawing the wood,

just keep sawing the wood, and eventually that tree is going to come down.

So Coach Bill Snyder comes to mind.

And when I was in politics, I had a chance to author a bill

that named the highway that leads up to the stadium after him.

He's long since retired, but he's the one that comes to mind.

There's so many others, and I think that's one thing that people do

who want to get better at exercising leadership.

They surround themselves with inspirational people who exercise

the type of leadership they want to do.

I've tried to do that myself.

Yeah, it's why we love sharing these stories, isn't it?

It's a great opportunity, isn't it, to hear?

Coach Snyder and keep sawing the wood and the long-term horizon

and that opportunity, isn't it, to learn from someone

with a completely different background and where sport crosses over

with public life for you.

Always curious and fascinated about that.

The Kansas Leadership Center, as I described, a beacon of hope for me

around what elected officials can do if you choose to really live a life

with purpose.

If you could collaborate with anyone on anything, Ed,

given the power of your vision, is there someone that springs to mind

that you thought, that's the person that I could really accelerate our work with?

Yeah, you know, what comes to my mind, Luke, is I've had a chance,

because the Kansas Leadership Center is so unique, there's nothing quite like it

in terms of the scale, the focus, the belief that leadership is an activity.

I've had a chance over the years to help inspire similar efforts

around the world.

And what I would love is a formal way for those groups to collaborate.

So there are some in Australia, like Leadership Victoria.

There's the Massa Leadership Initiative in Jerusalem.

There's Sistema Italia in Italy.

There's the Hawaii Leadership Forum.

There's probably a few dozen of these efforts around the globe

that I think share a lot of the similar beliefs and principles

we've talked about today.

And I would love...

I would love a global collaboration to dismantle the bad leadership

that exists and help promote this new vision of leadership

that you share, that I share, that we're all working on.

That would be my dream.

Well, what a dream that is.

And, you know, it's fascinating, Ed, isn't it, that I'm sitting here

in Victoria, don't know anything about Leadership Victoria,

but I'm reading about the Leadership Kansas Center

that you've created.

And I'm with you.

If we could spread more of that.

If we could spread more positivity, understand more, as you said,

that leadership's not authority.

It is about exercising leadership.

It's a skill.

It's not easy.

It's something we can all do.

And you don't have to have a title to do it.

And you can do it on a daily basis with your own family,

and you can actually create better outcomes.

It's a great story, Ed.

I'm fascinated by it.

Really incredible what you've been up to.

And I really appreciate your time today.

Thanks for joining me.

Luke, thanks for the opportunity.

Thanks for doing what you do.

And we'd love to connect again in the future.

I appreciate your work.

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