Teaching leadership on a graduate level all over the world, Christine Wood, a core Reckoning collaborator, often finds people resistant to the word “leader- ship.” Consider The Netherlands, where leadership in times past was made through shifting alliances and was often insensitive toward the needs of the average citizen. Or consider Africa, where colonization disappeared almost overnight and Africans were left as powerless “objects” of foreign domination and were not trained or skilled to become “subjects” of nation building. At one point, violence was considered the best way to bring order and stability. Che Guevarra was hired to come to Africa to teach leaders how to get productively violent. (You can read all about this in The Fate of Africa, published by Foreign Affairs Press.)

Somehow the term “Everyday Leadership” melts all sorts of resistance. It’s a term first used by Dan Mulhern in his book,Everyday Leadership:Getting results in Business, Politics and Life. Reckoning goes into at-risk neighborhoods to teach art work- shops centered on character qualities that teach youth and their parents how to be everyday leaders. They become local heroes by living ethically, 24/7.

Everyday leaders take responsibility for:

1. Identifying the world they want to live in;
   
2. Stepping into a gap to fill a need in their corner of the world.