Review of Lead Without Blame

Written by Diana Larsen and Tricia Broderick .

Reviewed by Aino Vonge Corry .

It took me some time to pick this book up. I bought it as soon as possible (it was published in 2022) because one of the authors is Diana Larsen, who has played a major role in my professional life in many ways. However, it stayed on my shelf for a while because of its title. My thoughts were: “Of course, we lead without blame. Surely, we know all there is to know already about this?”.

When I finally picked it up, however, I really enjoyed reading it. What I love about this book are the very concrete advice and the several retrospectives for different situations fleshed out, making them immediately useful. I even used one of them the day after I read the book; I was invited to facilitate a retrospective for a team of project managers, and I used the retrospective suggestion from Chapter 5: Accelerating the Essential Motivators with Retrospectives, because it inspired me to use my Dixit cards again.

The book divides different difficult subjects into chapters and deals with them one at a time. I particularly got something out of, especially, the chapter about conflict resilience (read the sentence again: it is not about solving or avoiding conflict, but about learning to be resilient around it!). 

The chapter about power dynamics was also a great reminder of the aspects of it that I tend to forget to think about; when I work in a big organisation, the formal and organisational power seem easy to spot based on the hierarchy, but I sometimes forget about the more hidden power dynamics like informal or influential power.

The first part of the book is about essential motivators, leading resilient teams, and continuous learning. This part of the book describes concepts and solutions that I work with every day, so I personally enjoyed part two more, as I learned more new stuff there.

As a Dane, the chapter on inclusive collaboration made me think about things I would not naturally think about. The description, both in graphics and text, about the difference between diversity, equality, equity and inclusion is important, and as a non-native English speaker, I need to think consciously about these differences. Concepts such as intersectionality, microaggressions and Mount Stupid were, if not new to me, then not in my conscious mind, at least. Thankfully, the book describes a custom-made retrospective for a team to dive into these issues in the workplace. 

I warm-heartedly suggest this book as an easy way to familiarize themselves with the most important factors of modern, human leadership. The invitations to reflect after each chapter are also very helpful, it’l made me stop and think every time, instead of rushing to the next chapter. Also, the bibliography contains a lot of references for further understanding.

If for nothing else, read this book to learn about the two percent truth technique in feedback in the brilliant chapter about the topic. It reminds us to spend some more time understanding feedback when we get it, thinking about the two percent truth this comes from, instead of dismissing it because we disagree.

Buy the book here.