All the Difference: Six Leadership Actions to Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value

Summary

Look around your team. You see people with different communication styles, perspectives, cultural norms, and capabilities. These differences are expressed in all kinds of ways—a casual gesture in a meeting; a colleague's opinion on a current event; an intense work style—and can often lead to friction, even conflict. You try to manage around them, but what if these differences are the key to your team's success?

In All the Difference, Susan MacKenty Brady, Stuart D. Kliman, and Leslie C. Smith reveal that leaders must shift their view: Difference is not just noise to tolerate—it's the raw material for creating value. It's true, they argue, that when difference isn't understood or acknowledged, it breeds disconnection, draining performance and potential. What's needed is a leadership strategy for turning human difference into your organization's greatest strength.

With examples from frontline leaders, current research, and insights from their own experiences, the authors provide a framework of six "target actions" that will help you uncover and leverage the productive power of difference on your team: from "Know You—Leverage Your Best Self & Help Others Do the Same" to "See the Full Story and Honor Multiple Perspectives" to "Commit to Action—Demonstrate and Create Accountability."