Title: Leading From The Back: A Guide to Building Your Leadership Toolbox

By: Justin Rain

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-rain/

Growing up is the scariest part of any individual’s life. The new roles and responsibilities that get thrust upon us at such an early age can be both daunting and induce extreme anxiety to many young adults. My book, Leading from the Back: A Guide to Building Your Leadership Toolbox, is meant to help young adults navigate some of these new responsibilities when they are expected to lead any given situation.

Leading From the Back provides resources, helpful hints, and ‘tools’ to help face the day-to-day stressors that all individuals face. In specific, those who take on leadership roles. The book discusses topics such as, how to provide strong staff training to how to give proper feedback. Through both research and experience, the strategies I provide have been developed and implemented successfully in every leadership role I have undertaken.

To this day, I have always been the type of person to bite off more than I can chew. I started at a young age working a paper route when I was just 10 years old. I then continued to take on various roles such as a coach, supervisor, and now university instructor. Each of these experiences has taught me different lessons and transferable skills that are common to all leadership roles.

Hence this book entails personal anecdotes and mantras, as well as research from academia. This book combines my passion for research and writing with my desire to help people and share my experiences. I hope that young adults can read my book and understand that they are not alone and that everyone makes mistakes and struggles with growing up and taking on new roles. But through the strategies I have provided, I hope they can finish reading with some helpful ‘tools’ to help get through the hard times.

So, what does it mean to lead from the back? Leading from the back is a leadership style that ensures the people you are leading feel supported and safe to grow under your supervision. This is not a ‘management’ style. Even in this economically driven world, leaders do not equate managers. An individual can take on leadership as micro as within a family unit to as macro as largescale business owners. Either way, a leader puts their followers first. For more specific details, read my book!

I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate at Ryerson University, where I study Canadian policy and the political system. With years of experience examining politicians, people in power and national leaders, I have become a critic of what it means to be a good leader. I think many politicians could benefit from some of the tools suggested in my book.

Sir Winston Churchill once wrote, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” This has been my personal mantra since the moment I heard it. We create our own history and a strong leader will be the one dictating how people will remember us. Wouldn’t you like to be remembered in the most positive light, knowing you are both loved and respected? Trust me, knowing you have made a difference in just one person’s life, is the most satisfying feeling.

Moving forward I wish to gain publicity and share my knowledge and experiences with as many young adults as I can to help and support our future leaders. I want to thank the Authors’ Lounge for allowing me to share my story and my book. I hope you all have the chance to read it and maybe even learn something. You can find it on Amazon or through this link: