There Is No Box: A Practical Guide for the Relatable Leader ties effective leadership to being relatable. The workforce craves a relatable leader to help navigate a complex work environment. There Is No Box explains how relatable leaders bring out the best in their companies and allows their audience to understand that they are the CEOs of their lives.
I’ll first dive into book details, give a brief overview of the book, and then give some key takeaways.
Book Details
Length: 288 pages
Authors: Marisa and Simon Cleveland
Publisher: Matt Holt
Date Published: November 8, 2022
Amazon.com
Book Overview
Part one of three, “Color Inside the Lines,” describes the usefulness rules have in society. For example, children learn through structure, and so do employees in organizations.
The chapters in part one show how leaders learn how to lead and can do so by becoming relatable, understanding that everyone has different backgrounds, and that leadership is a complex array of challenges centered around people.
Part two, “Think Outside the Box,” challenges assumptions that leaders and employees must stay within a predesigned box. A quote from the book shows this idea: “When someone asks you to think outside the box, what they’re really asking is for you to take the knowledge you’ve acquired up to that point and add a new perspective (pg 48).”
The book further explains that thinking outside the box includes rethinking approaches to culture and communication and viewing leadership as non-hierarchical. Each is an essential component of becoming a relatable leader.
Finally, in part three, “There is no box,” becoming a relatable leader requires that people become the CEOs of their lives. Instead of believing that there’s only one or a few ways to stellar leadership, the book explains that there are many paths to successful leadership.
Like a CEO, leaders forge their paths through the complexities they have in front of them. Similarly, part three explains that anyone can learn relatable leadership, and anyone can learn to be a relatable leader.
Buy There Is No Box
Key Take Aways
I was impressed with how well-researched There Is No Box was. Each chapter came with one or several relatable studies that directly applied to each chapter. It provided validity to the argument that leadership is a learned art and that people can learn how to become relatable leaders.
The readability and flow were excellent. Paragraphs nested into the chapters, and the chapters supported the parts to allow the audience to follow the concepts easily. Also, the studies mentioned in the book were simple to follow and relevant to the chapter headings.
Finally, there were reflections to do at the end of each chapter. The reflections allowed the audience to interact with the book and practice the concepts in the chapter.
It allowed me, as the reader, to internalize what I read. Additionally, the reflections provided an excellent summary of the concepts from each chapter.
Conclusion
I enjoyed reading There Is No Box. It was unique in that the focus was on becoming a relatable leader rather than tips/suggestions on how to lead.
It was a refreshing read because it got to the essence of leadership: relatability, humility, communication, determination, and ownership.
There Is No Box will not be a flashy read. But it is a necessary read for anyone in a leadership role and for those who stumbled into leadership. True leaders are relatable and must account for those under their charge.
Have you read There Is No Box? Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Click here if you’re interested in buying the book.
Thanks for reading!
Thank got for another great book review Robert, this one for There Is No Box. I was pleasantly surprised after discerning the theme from the bent of the book to find such thoughtful gems of wisdom exhibited throughout.
It is funny that success is demanded in leadership but so often is seen as a preconceived notion for how that success must be achieved. There’s always another way to skin a cat, and often those in leadership have the short-sighted perception that the path to success before it’s the only way to succeed in the future. Nothing could actually be further from the truth.
I think your are correct to isolate the desire to create relatable leaders as opposed to cookie cutter managers.
Joseph,
Relatable leaders harness the power of humility to buck the system. Oftentimes, we feel as leaders that we must be decisive, make decisions, and be the loudest in the room.
I think “There is No Box” does a good job of arguing for a relatable leadership style.
Thanks for your comment.
Robert