Narrator: What if a great leader isn't a charismatic CEO or a powerful politician, but a rat in a Parisian kitchen? In the film Ratatouille, the cynical food critic Anton Ego is humbled by a simple dish, forcing him to declare that while not everyone can become a great artist, a great artist can come from anywhere. This single, powerful idea—that talent and leadership can emerge from the most unexpected places—is the central argument of Paul Schmitz's book, Everyone Leads: Building Leadership from the Community Up. Schmitz challenges the conventional wisdom that leadership is a title held by a select few, arguing instead that it is an action anyone can take to improve their community. He provides a roadmap for how to unlock this potential, not by looking for heroes, but by building leadership from the ground up.

Narrator: The core premise of Everyone Leads is a fundamental redefinition of leadership. Schmitz, drawing on his extensive experience with the national service organization Public Allies, argues that leadership is not a noun—a position one holds—but a verb—an action one takes. It is the act of taking personal and social responsibility to work with others toward a common goal. This simple shift in perspective radically expands the pool of potential leaders.

The book is filled with stories of individuals who would never fit a traditional leadership mold but who created extraordinary change. Consider Peter Hoeffel, a philosophy graduate working in a deli, who felt his education was going to waste. After joining Public Allies, he discovered a passion for disability rights and went on to lead a major advocacy organization, turning around a struggling agency. Or Bizunesh Talbot-Scott, an eighteen-year-old single mother who felt she had no potential. Public Allies gave her the focus and confidence to excel, leading her from a community college to the University of Michigan Law School and eventually to a staff position leading presidential personnel at the White House.

Perhaps most powerfully, there is the story of Frank Alvarez, a former gang member who was on a path from juvenile hall to state prison. Through programs like YouthBuild and Public Allies, he turned his life around. He learned from peers who had degrees from top universities, gained confidence, and became the director of a YouthBuild program, creating opportunities for young people facing the same challenges he once did. These stories prove that leadership isn't about "resume bling" but about seeing a problem and taking responsibility for solving it within one's circle of influence.

Narrator: To unlock the leadership potential in everyone, Schmitz argues that we must change how we view communities, especially those facing economic hardship. The traditional approach is what he calls a "needs map," which defines a community by its problems: crime, unemployment, poor housing, and failing schools. This deficit-based view creates a "prison in people's minds," where residents internalize the negative labels and become dependent on outside experts to "fix" them.

Schmitz advocates for an alternative framework: Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). This approach starts by looking at what is strong, not what is wrong. It posits that every community, like every individual, is both half-empty and half-full. The key is to focus on the full half by identifying and mobilizing three types of assets: the gifts of individuals (skills, passions, talents), the power of associations (churches, clubs, neighborhood groups), and the resources of institutions (schools, libraries, businesses).

In Indianapolis, for example, a community connector named Marc McAleavey encountered a new gang called the "Buddha Boys." Instead of seeing them as a problem to be solved, he and his partner reached out and discovered their individual talents and their desire for economic opportunity. By connecting them with local businesses based on their skills, they found jobs for the youths, and the gang problem disappeared. This is the essence of ABCD: it doesn't create clients who need services, but citizens who are producers of their own solutions.

Narrator: In an increasingly diverse world, simply having people from different backgrounds in the same room is not enough. Schmitz stresses that while diversity is a reality, inclusion is a choice. It requires intentionally creating a new culture where all voices are valued and systemic issues of power, privilege, and oppression are confronted directly.

Public Allies uses an exercise called the "Privilege Walk" to make these invisible forces visible. Participants stand in a line and take a step forward or backward based on a series of statements about their life experiences, such as "If your parents spoke English as their first language, move one space forward," or "If you have ever been stopped by police because of your presence in a neighborhood, move one space back." By the end, the group is scattered across the room, providing a stark visual representation of unearned advantage and disadvantage.

This understanding is crucial for building truly inclusive communities. It requires leaders to move beyond tokenism and actively work to dismantle oppressive systems. This means recognizing that "community service" isn't just something the "haves" do for the "have-nots." A young woman from a low-income neighborhood who spends her evenings caring for her sister's children and her weekends helping at church is providing an immense service, even if it doesn't fit the formal definition of volunteering. Inclusive leadership means recognizing and valuing these contributions and ensuring that everyone, especially those on the margins, has a seat at the table.

Narrator: Schmitz argues that no single organization, no matter how effective, can solve complex social problems like poverty, educational inequity, or violence. The nonprofit sector is often fragmented, with countless organizations working in silos, competing for funding, and failing to achieve collective impact.

He tells a story from Milwaukee's child welfare system, where a meeting was called to discuss a troubled immigrant family. Social workers listed a litany of problems the children were facing. When the mother was finally asked what she thought the main issue was, she replied that her electricity had been shut off for weeks. Multiple professionals knew about this basic problem but had done nothing, because it wasn't their specific job to fix it. This fragmentation prevents real solutions.

The antidote is what is known as "collective impact." In Cincinnati, the StrivePartnership brought together hundreds of leaders from different sectors to focus on a single goal: improving educational outcomes. By coordinating existing assets and collaborating instead of launching new programs, they dramatically increased the high school graduation rate from 50% to 80%. This demonstrates that sustainable change requires leaders who can build bridges, facilitate collaboration, and align diverse stakeholders around a common agenda.

Narrator: The final and most crucial value is integrity, which Schmitz defines as the integration of purpose, values, relationships, and actions. It is about being accountable in four key directions: to ourselves, to those we work with, to those we serve, and to those who came before us.

Accountability to those we serve is perhaps the most challenging. Schmitz tells the story of Leif Elsmo, who was tasked with improving community relations for the University of Chicago Medical Center, an institution long seen as an "ivory tower" disconnected from its South Side neighborhood. Instead of just launching new programs, Elsmo's team focused on making the institution accountable to the community. They educated hospital staff on the neighborhood's history and assets, created a collaborative of local health clinics, and held community summits to report on progress. This shifted the hospital's focus from being merely patient-centered to being truly community-centered.

This is the ultimate expression of leadership in Schmitz's view. It is not about personal charisma or authority, but about a deep-seated commitment to a set of values and a willingness to be held accountable for them. It is about bringing one's whole, authentic self to the work of building a better community.

Narrator: Ultimately, Everyone Leads delivers a powerful and optimistic message: leadership is a choice available to all of us. It is not reserved for the privileged or the powerful, but is an inherent responsibility of citizenship. The book's most important takeaway is that by shifting our perspective—from seeing leaders as positions to seeing leadership as an action, and from seeing communities as collections of needs to seeing them as reservoirs of assets—we can unlock a vast, untapped potential for positive change.

The challenge this book leaves us with is both simple and profound: to look around our own neighborhoods, workplaces, and families, and to ask not "Where are the leaders?" but "How will I lead?"