The Book I Wasn't Going to Write

A few months ago, I taught a leadership mindset workshop for a women's leadership group at an accounting firm in Texas. A few weeks later, I received the participant evaluations. One comment, in particular, caught my eye. It said:

“I feel like the skills part of her discussion was needed. She talked about probably not writing that book but that’s what we need. Many people may need self-confidence so that was probably helpful for a lot of people. But personally, I need more about how to be a great leader, not how to shut out my inner voice from negativity.”

That comment has stuck with me. Especially “that’s what we need.”

To understand why that comment mattered so much, I need to tell you the story behind my first book, Master Your Mindset: How Women Leaders Step Up. My original plan was to write a book about those attributes that are important for leaders to work on - both mindsets and skills. And once I started writing, I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew, so I cut the project in half. I wrote the Mindset book, with the plan of writing the Skills book down the road.

During the workshop, I shared with the participants that I was now doubtful if I was ever going to write the Skills book. I wrote the Mindset book as a pandemic project - I was home alone all the time and needed something productive to do so I didn’t spend all my free time drinking wine while binge-watching HGTV renovation shows.

But it was hard. Writing a book is a slog. It's hours of sitting alone at my laptop, reading interview transcripts, rewriting paragraphs, second-guessing yourself, and trying to figure out whether one sentence is actually better than the last version. As an extrovert, it's about my least favorite way to spend a year.

When I teach or speak about leadership mindset, I often hear that people are being held back by their inner critic, that voice in their heads that tells them they’re not smart enough or otherwise deserving of what they really want. And those people need to hear the truth - that the voice in their head is lying to them - and understand that they’re just as worthy of success as anyone else.

But the fact is that not everyone’s inner voice is negative. And - as I originally set out to show - becoming an effective leader requires leveling up both your mindset and your skills.

So I’m going to write the Skills book. But I’m going to do it differently this time. In a way that’s more fun, I hope. And in a way that allows for participation from my audience, gives me feedback along the way, and hopefully results in an even better finished product. Here’s the plan:

The Skills book will be in the same format as the Mindset book, with each chapter being about a specific leadership skill. Starting in September, at the beginning of each month, I’m going to publish the working draft of a chapter here on Substack and I want to know from you:

• Where did you find yourself nodding along?

• What felt incomplete?

• What leadership situation have you faced that this chapter doesn’t address?

• What question should I answer before this becomes a finished chapter?

Each month we'll also go deeper on that skill through interviews with accomplished women leaders, live conversations, Q&A sessions, and occasional workshops that bring the chapter to life.

I have 13 chapters/skills mapped out, so that means this process will go on through next September, at which point I’ll be 90% done with the book. I’ll just have to finalize the text, write the introduction, and do all the formatting/publishing stuff to get the book ready for publication.

I've always believed leadership is learned through conversation, not just reading. So rather than disappearing for a year and emerging with a finished manuscript, I'd rather build this book with all of you. Your questions will shape it. Your experiences will challenge it. Your stories will make it better.

I plan to make it free to participate in both the chapter draft/feedback and the additional activities described above. If you want to provide some financial support, I will love you dearly, plus you’ll get free copies of the book once it’s published, invites to exclusive quarterly online events, and a free ticket to the book launch party. Click the Subscribe button for more info.

I’ll be posting the Table of Contents in a week or two so you can see the skills I’m planning to cover. While I already have a bunch of interviews in the can from the Mindset book, if you know anyone who has one or more of the skills mastered that I should consider interviewing, please reach out and put me in touch.

A little over a year from now, I hope we’re celebrating the publication of a book that isn’t just mine. I hope it’s a book shaped by dozens of conversations with women who are doing the work of leading every day. I can’t wait to see where this journey takes us.

Molly