This is a fascinating conversation with highly successful CEO Kevin Hancock, author of The Seventh Power: One CEO’s Journey Into the Business of Shared Leadership, on everything from coping with the current pandemic to his time spent on the Piney Ridge Indian Reservation. I love how humble he is while also being quite expanded in his thinking and paradigms.

In 2012, Hancock was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological speaking disorder that made communicating difficult. The partial loss of his own voice, while initially considered to be a hindrance, was eventually seen as a possible gift, an invitation and a calling to lead differently, and to strengthen the voices of others.

Hancock traveled from his hometown of Casco, Maine, to a remote Native American charter school, and eventually to Ukraine, all to test, refine, and validate one formative idea: organizations are most effective when the opportunity and responsibility for leading is shared broadly and embraced by all.

These encounters ultimately inform a series of insights as to how CEOs and other leaders might elegantly break down the planet’s entrenched, top-down governance model in favor of a new playbook for heightened human engagement, hallmarked by shared leadership, dispersed power, and respect for all voices.

Across Kevin’s travels, seven lessons materialized that must be understood and integrated in order for shared leadership to become possible.

A bold call for a new form of shared leadership, The Seventh Power details a new pathway to organizational excellence built on the employee-centric company, where power is dispersed, leadership is shared, and every voice is heard.

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Read The Book That Inspires The Show

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.