Some of the best lessons I’ve learned about leadership came from people who didn’t talk much about leadership.

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They were too busy doing it.

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In 1997, I had the opportunity to work with Chrysler and the United Auto Workers on something called the Partnership for Quality Initiative—PQI. I came into the work through my mentor, Ron Kregoski, a gifted consultant who believed deeply in giving people practical quality tools they could use where the work actually happened. Ron was also a terrific team builder. Much of what I later brought to the work had his bones in it.

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The partnership itself was led by two very different people.

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Robert Miller represented Chrysler management. Chuck Britnell represented the UAW.

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Bob was exceptionally bright, a little rough around the edges, and a strong champion of the work. He also became a champion of mine. Chuck had a different constituency and a different kind of accountability. He represented union members, and unlike his management counterparts, he had to continue earning their votes. That distinction mattered.

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Bob and Chuck didn’t eliminate those differences. They found ways to work across them.

And together they championed something I came to believe was much more important than another employee training program. They began changing the system. The bigger change wasn’t who paid the bill. It was who got into the room.

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PQI increasingly brought the people who actually did the work into planning, problem solving and review—not after the important decisions had already been made, but while they were being made. 

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I saw the power of that idea firsthand when Chrysler was preparing to relaunch its Jeep operation in Toledo. Teams of union and management employees were assembled to help design the new facility. Skilled tradespeople who would eventually maintain and support the operation began working alongside engineers on plant layout, machinery selection, work structures and operating practices.

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That was unusual.

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The tradespeople had volunteered for these assignments. Instead of spending every day out on the factory floor, they were working in offices, meeting with engineers and traveling to visit equipment vendors. It was good duty. They were participating. I’m not sure they were committed.

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I struggled with how to help them see what this opportunity could really mean. Finally, I asked them:

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“Would you want your kids to work here?”

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The answer came pretty much as I expected.

“Hell no.”

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I understood. My own father had been determined that his kids would go to college rather than spend their lives sweating on a factory floor as he spent his entire adult life doing. 

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But these were also some of the best-paying jobs available to working families in Toledo. So we kept talking.

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And then came the question that changed the conversation:

 

“What would have to change about this place before you’d be proud to have your kids work here?” 

 

Now we had something to talk about: the work environment, equipment, safety, how people were treated, how decisions were made, how the work was organized, and the things that made a difficult job unnecessarily difficult.

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And gradually another realization became obvious.

They were sitting in the room where some of those decisions were being made.

That experience changed how I thought about employee involvement.

It’s easy to tell people we want them to take ownership. It’s easy to offer a workshop on teamwork, communication or problem solving. It’s considerably harder to change the practices and policies that determine whose knowledge counts and who gets invited into the room.

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The skilled tradespeople knew things the engineers didn’t know. Engineers brought knowledge the tradespeople didn’t possess. Union representatives understood realities management could easily miss. Management carried responsibilities the union representatives didn’t share. The objective wasn’t to erase those differences.

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The differences were part of the value. But the system had to make room for them.

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And when it did, people who had no management title and little formal authority began exercising leadership. They brought knowledge. They challenged assumptions. They influenced decisions. They helped design the future of their workplace. 

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I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to work alongside some remarkable people. Bob Miller and Chuck Britnell are two of them. They taught me that if you want different leadership to grow, sometimes you have to change the conditions in which people are being asked to lead.

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Leadership isn’t only about becoming a better individual leader. Sometimes it’s about creating a place where other people can lead, too.