Leadership Reads: The Power of Flexing

Kate Zipay

04-29-2025

As we wrap up the last week of the semester in my course, Leadership in a Changing World, I am reminded of a core premise of the curriculum: Leadership (or parenthood, or marriage, for that matter) is not one big thing you are or become. Instead, it’s a small, everyday set of practices and ways of thinking that fundamentally shift how you interact with the world around you.

With that in mind, I offer you both a preview and an invitation: a preview into our leadership course, and an invitation to see their journey — and yours — through the lens of The Power of Flexing by Sue Ashford.

When I first read The Power of Flexing, it felt instantly familiar. I found myself nodding along almost the entire time. I wasn’t surprised to find it so closely aligned with the philosophy behind our course. Over the years, I’ve come to deeply admire Sue — not just for her scholarship, but for how she models what she writes: learning through action, leading with humility and mentoring others with steadfastness and generosity. In fact, when I looked back at my course syllabus, I realized that Sue’s work is assigned both on the first and the last days of class — the bookends of our students’ leadership journey.

At its heart, our course is about helping students see leadership not as a fixed destination, but as an ongoing process of stretching, learning and adapting. It’s about preparing them for a world where complexity and change are constants — and where leadership is less about certainty and more about curiosity, courage and connection. Your best way to experience those ideas and practices might be to join me in reading The Power of Flexing.

The book invites you to treat yourself — and your personal effectiveness — as a series of curiosities and experiments. This mindset can be applied in big moments and small ones: to question, play, try on new ways of doing, reflect and iterate. As Ashford explains, “To learn and grow … you need to flex; that is, to try doing something different.” So, what is something in your life that you need to flex — by experimenting, learning, and trying something different? This book will help you embrace growth, one flex at a time.

Looking at our students’ experiences this semester, it’s clear that flexing is built into the curriculum:

• Weekly Reflections: Each week, students paused to notice, name and learn from their experiences. They took broad leadership lessons and made them nuanced and personal. As Ashford writes, “Reflection is a powerful practice whenever you do it,” encouraging readers to engage in it regularly.
• Learning and Connection: Throughout the semester, students became genuine friends — something that, candidly, surprised me at first. Recently, when I asked them to pick a theme for our end-of-term celebration, they chose friendship (and, reassuringly, growth). Initially, I wondered if I had missed the mark — but then I realized this was a hidden lesson: that prioritizing learning and connection over perfection fosters the kind of environment where leadership experiments and genuine friendships can take root. As Ashford reminds us, “It takes a village to grow.”
• Final Leadership Journey: As students prepare to submit their final leadership journeys, they are weaving together small experiments, lessons and moments of courage into a leadership story that is dynamic, personal and evolving. They are given the freedom to choose their own mode of delivery — and past submissions have included podcasts, children’s books, newsletters, art galleries, and even a cake (with an accompanying food blog!). The assignment itself is a practice of flexing: a reminder that leadership growth can — and should — take many forms throughout their careers.

Throughout the semester, students have also been experimenting in tangible ways: practicing storytelling to inspire and connect, asking better questions to foster learning and engagement, and encouraging empathy as a foundation for leadership in a diverse and changing world. None of this growth happened by accident. It happened because students stepped into uncertainty, stretched beyond their comfort zones and chose to engage thoughtfully with their own development — even (and especially) when it wasn’t easy. Simply put, they learned the power of flexing.

I cannot think of a member of our Daniels School of Business community who wouldn’t benefit from reading The Power of Flexing. If you need a reminder that leadership is not about being ready — it’s about becoming, if you need a call to embrace small, intentional experiments in your work and life or if you need a moment to celebrate that growth is something we can actively choose, one small flex at a time, then you will enjoy this book.

Sue Ashford beautifully concludes her book with words that will now become the final words I share with our graduating seniors —

I wish you good growth.