August is Gwyn Teatro’s birthday month (happy birthday!) and it’s also the anniversary of the release of her audiobook, In the Thick of It: Mastering the Art of Leading from the Middle, narrated by media personality and veteran broadcast journalist Lynda Steele.  It’s time for us to honour Gwyn and the rewarding journey she took us on while creating and publishing her book.

We were introduced to Gwyn Teatro by her stepson and his wife, our dear friends Stephen and Ginny, who we’d fallen in love with while buddy-boating up and down the Pacific coast of Mexico, snorkelling and exploring quaint coastal villages, and spending time on one another’s sailboats in remote anchorages, singing and laughing.

It was 2016, and John and I were elbows-deep into building our new publishing company, Ingenium Books, working on developing our first legal agreements and getting our incorporation docs in order.

One afternoon between songs, Ginny said, “You’ve got to meet Gwyn.” They told us about her popular leadership blog and that she was interested in writing a book (In the Thick of It, as a book title, didn’t come until later) based on having posted weekly blog content over seven years. I loved the cheeky title of her blog, called “You’re Not the Boss of Me,” and when I checked it out, I became an instant fan of the woman behind it, too.

“My name is Gwyn Teatro, and I have long believed that the quality of leadership in an organization determines the willingness of its people to take their best selves with them when they go to work. People who go to work and go home again feeling under-valued and under-rewarded are likely under-performing.  As such, good leadership is not just a nice-to-have.  It is a business imperative.”

I started working one-on-one with Gwyn, helping her review nearly 300,000 words of blog content and organize the topics into a somewhat-coherent outline for a book. They are two very different beasts, blogs and books, as Gwyn quickly discovered. But she got down to work, tossing aside the material that didn’t fit and writing the new pieces that were required.

It wasn’t long into the manuscript development process that John and I found ourselves in Vancouver, Canada, where Gwyn lives, and I had the pleasure of accepting an invitation to join her for coffee at her North Vancouver condo, meeting her in person for the first time after months of video calls. When she opened the door to let me in, I suffered a bit of a shock. The woman with the bigger-than-life drive to help leaders step into their authenticity, with the big smile and an even bigger self-deprecating sense of humour, was — tiny. Tiny! I towered over her, which is not something that happens often as I’m only 5’3”. Add my self-consciousness about my weight and I felt like Christopher Robin’s heffalump, only not nearly as cute. I felt all lopsided and off-balance, but Gwyn quickly put me at ease.

It was while sitting at her dining room table that we had the first of many conversations about Gwyn’s two alter egos: Miss Prissy Perfection and Mordred the Funeral Director, taking turns speaking into Gwyn’s ears.  

Miss Prissy Perfection, on Gwyn’s left shoulder, would whisper that this sentence, or that phrase, wasn’t good enough. It was supposed to be perfect. Or that perfect writing was the only thing worth striving for. Mordred the Funeral Director, on Gwyn’s right shoulder, took a much dimmer view of things, predictably. Who do you think you are? Mordred would hiss. What on earth made you think you have enough to say, or enough authority, to write a book — on leadership of all things? We had a good chuckle about these two alter egos, and I think perhaps they each managed to make an appearance inside the pages of her book.

But I’ve never forgotten that lesson: that each of us has multiple conflicting forces within us. And achieving a big goal requires that we wrestle our demons to the ground, thanking them for wanting to keep us safe, but reminding them that I’ve got this, thanks.

Gwyn’s book, the award-winning In the Thick of It: Mastering the Art of Leading from the Middle, is a different kind of leadership book. It’s full of Gwyn-isms: poking fun at herself, her diminutive stature, turning her perceived blunders into valuable lessons she was passing on to the reader. She’s managed to deliver content that is chock full of value for the reader while delivering several laugh-out-loud moments.

And in 2022 we published In the Thick of It in audiobook, managing to secure high profile veteran Canadian journalist Lynda Steele as narrator. With three decades in television and radio, Lynda is no stranger to speaking into a microphone. But she describes some of the challenges spending forty hours narrating with her head stuck into a box covered in blankets…

Anyway, we hope you’ll join us in congratulating Gwyn and Lynda – Gwyn for a birthday month and for all her accomplishments since publishing In the Thick of It, and Lynda for celebrating two years without having to stick her head in a box.  You can help them celebrate by checking In the Thick of It out at your favourite book retailer, purchasing a copy, telling your friends who are trying their hands at leading from the middle, and leaving an honest review.

Learn more about Gwyn Teatro