Look around your team. You see people with different communication styles, perspectives, cultural norms, and capabilities. These differences are expressed in all kinds of ways—a casual gesture in a meeting, a colleague's opinion on a current event, an intense work style—and can often lead to friction, even conflict. You try to manage around them, but what if these differences are the key to your team's success?

In All the Difference, bestselling author and head of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership Susan MacKenty Brady, business negotiation expert Stuart D. Kliman, and retired US Army Lieutenant General Leslie C. Smith argue that leaders must shift their view: difference is not just noise to tolerate—it's the raw material for creating value. When difference isn't understood or acknowledged, it breeds disconnection, saps performance, and undermines your team's potential. What's needed is a leadership strategy for turning human difference into your organization's greatest strength.

Our teams have never been more complex, and the challenge of leading them has never been more urgent. All the Difference is an indispensable guide for transforming your team and creating a thriving organization in a world full of difference.

Two of the coauthors recently took time to answer seven questions from Porchlight about their new book. 

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Porchlight Book Company: Writing a book is no small undertaking. What compelled you to write this one?

All the Difference Authors: Although we came to this work from three very different paths—business, negotiation, and military leadership—we kept arriving at the same conclusion: the greatest opportunities and challenges leaders face are about people. More specifically, they are about how leaders navigate difference when the stakes are high.

We wrote All the Difference because we believe difference is one of the most underleveraged assets in organizations today. When leaders know how to bridge perspectives, build trust, and remain curious under pressure, difference becomes a source of innovation, better decisions, stronger relationships, and greater value.

PBC: What is one unanswered question you encountered as you wrote the book that you are most interested in answering now?

ATD: One question continues to stay with us: How do we help more people become genuinely better at being in relationship with one another?

Leadership is one of the most important places where those relationships play out, but the question is much broader than leadership itself. As technology advances and our world becomes increasingly complex, we're fascinated by what enables people to stay curious, build trust, repair relationships, and create value across difference. We suspect that question will continue to shape our work for years to come.

PBC: If there is only one thing a reader takes away from reading this book, what would you hope it to be?

ATD: That difference itself can be the source of our greatest opportunities. The challenge is whether we have the leadership capacity to unlock its value. We hope readers come away believing that they can lead differently by choosing curiosity over certainty, respect over reactivity, and connection over justification.

One of the great things about books is that they tend to lead readers to other books. What book(s) related to this topic would you recommend people read after (or perhaps even before) reading your book?

ATD: Many of the ideas in All the Difference build upon the work of remarkable thinkers and practitioners. We'd recommend Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen; Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton; The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson; Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey; and any of Daniel Goleman's work on Emotional Intelligence. Each offers valuable insights into leadership, relationships, learning, and human behavior.

PBC: What is your favorite book?

Susan: I have way too many to choose just one, but the book I gift the most to others is The Power of Purpose by Richard Leider.

Les: Luke Susan I have many favorites but my favorite of all time is Good to Great by Jim Collins.

Stu: My personal favorite, if we’re talking fiction, is is Unbroken by Laura Hildenbrand.

What are you reading now?

Susan: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane.

Les: I have several on my night stand in the order of precedence 1) All the Difference (a reread to feel what we see during presentations 2) Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr.  

Stu: Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

Do you have any future projects in the works that we can look forward to?

We see All the Difference as the seminal work on what we believe will be a new and required intelligence in the AI era: Difference Intelligence. We continue to explore how leaders can strengthen trust, navigate complexity, and create value across difference in an increasingly AI-enabled world. Whether through future writing, research, speaking, or leadership development, we're committed to helping leaders build organizations where people and performance thrive together.

About the Authors

Susan MacKenty Brady is a global leadership expert, speaker, and CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. She advises organizations worldwide on cultivating high-performing, human-centered cultures and is the coauthor of the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller Arrive and Thrive.

Stuart D. Kliman is a founder and Partner Emeritus at Vantage Partners, a midsize consulting and training organization headquartered in Boston. He is an expert in behavioral change management and collaboration, an alumnus of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the Head of Business Development at PrescriberPoint.

Leslie C. Smith is a retired US Army lieutenant general and former Inspector General. He currently serves as Vice President for Leadership, Education, and Programs at the Association of the United States Army. In addition, he is a visiting professor of leadership at Georgia Southern University and CEO of the LV Smith Corporate Group.