Kick

Two kids are stuck in a car, a sedan that smells like stale coffee and regret. One of them is a police officer, a local cop named Christina who’s just trying to get through another shift. The other is a teenager named Kevin, crammed in the back seat, staring out at the blur of his town disappearing behind him. For Christina, this is just another transport, a routine part of a job that’s all about process and paperwork. She sees a file, a case number, a destination: juvenile detention. It’s a clean, linear path from point A to point B. For Kevin, sitting in that same car, the world is anything but linear. It’s a chaotic tangle of bad choices, misunderstood intentions, and a future that just slammed shut. He’s a kid whose life has just been ripped apart at the seams, and he has no idea how to even begin stitching it back together.

This powerful disconnect—the gap between the official story and the messy, human truth—is a landscape Walter Dean Myers navigated his entire life. Myers, a celebrated author and a National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, grew up navigating the complexities of Harlem, often feeling like he was living in two different worlds at once. He saw how easily a young person, especially a young man of color, could be defined by a single mistake, their entire story flattened into a statistic. He wrote Kick with his son, Ross, to explore that very divide from both sides. The book alternates between Kevin’s raw, first-person account from inside the system and Christina’s third-person narrative on the outside, creating a novel that is a conversation about who gets to define us.

Module 1: Good Leadership Requires Emotional Presence

The foundation of effective leadership is a human connection. Too often, we're taught to keep work and life separate. To be "professional" means to be emotionally detached. But this approach creates a sterile environment where people feel like cogs in a machine, not valued partners. The author argues that great leaders build trust by caring personally and deeply about their team members.

This is about being human. Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, shares a powerful story from her early career. She was trying to recruit diamond cutters from Russia to work for her startup. She assumed money was the primary motivator. She offered higher salaries, but they weren't biting. Frustrated, she finally asked what it would take. Their answer surprised her. They wanted to have picnics with her. They wanted her to teach their families English. They were worried about their safety in a new country. They needed to know she cared about them as people, not just as assets. By agreeing to these personal requests, she showed she was invested in their well-being. She built trust. And she successfully recruited every single one of them.

So what does this mean for you? It means you must bring your whole self to work and encourage your team to do the same. This idea, from leadership thinker Fred Kofman, is about modeling authenticity. When a leader admits a mistake, shares a moment of vulnerability, or talks about their life outside of work, it sends a powerful signal. It says, "It's safe to be human here." This counters the old-school notion that professionalism requires an emotional mask. That mask leads to burnout and disengagement. True connection, on the other hand, fuels loyalty and unlocks discretionary effort. When your team knows you care, they’ll go the extra mile.