Kouzes and posner definition of leadership

Praise for the Fifth Edition of The Leadership Challenge

“My heart goes out to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner with the deepest gratitude for this book, the most powerful leadership resource available. It is providential that at a time of the lowest level of trust and the highest level of cynicism, The Leader- ship Challenge arrives with its message of hope. When there are dark days in our lives, Kouzes and Posner will shine a light.”

—Frances Hesselbein, former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA; author, My Life in Leadership

“Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have taken one of the true leadership classics of the late twentieth century and made it freshly relevant for today’s twenty-first century leaders. It is a must-read for today’s leaders who aspire to contribute in a more significant way tomorrow.”

—Douglas R. Conant, New York Times bestselling author, TouchPoints; retired CEO, Campbell Soup Company

“For twenty-five years, the names Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have been synony- mous with leadership. There is a reason for that. This book, in its new and updated form, demonstrates that leadership is a challenge you must win every day. It shows that every leader is unique, with his or her own style, and it helps you find your style. But the real beauty of this book is that it does not just tell you about leader- ship. It takes you by the hand, and walks you through the steps necessary to be better at what you do. It also gives you the confidence to take the kinds of risks every leader needs to take to succeed. I loved this book twenty-five years ago, and I love it today.”

—Joel Kurtzman, author, Common Purpose; editor-in-chief, Korn/Ferry Institute’s Briefings on Talent & Leadership

“We consider this twenty-fifth anniversary, fifth edition, the best leadership book out there because it combines solid research, marvelous stories, and highly usable advice. It struck us, as readers of prior editions, that Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner don’t just write about leadership. They lead, and they continue to innovate and model the way. We’re glad to be on the path behind them.”

—Jennifer Granholm and Dan Mulhern, coauthors, A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future

“If I could recommend only one of the tens of thousands of leadership books ever written, The Leadership Challenge would absolutely be my top choice, and by a wide margin. This new edition builds markedly on the last but remains character- istically Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner—a complex work in its underlying character, but brilliant in its simplicity and practical in design. The Leadership Challenge is the most useful leadership book ever written; I have each and every edition, and each is better than the last.”

—Tom Kolditz, author, In Extremis Leadership

“The Leadership Challenge has inspired and continues to inspire all those who have the will and commitment to take on the burden of responsibility entailed in leading other people. The book lightens that burden and even ennobles it. It values the humanity in us all and welcomes imagination and faith in the future. We are all grateful and better off with this book on the shelf and in our hearts.”

—Peter Block, author, Flawless Consulting

“The fifth edition of The Leadership Challenge is the culmination of decades of rigor- ous analysis of the characteristics of leadership. By modeling the behaviors described by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, every person can develop their leader- ship potential and become a more effective leader.”

—Dan Warmenhoven, executive chairman, board of directors, NetApp

“Developing generations of leaders for three decades, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner are yet again at the cutting edge of leadership. Their five practices of exemplary leadership exactly put into words the characteristics of leadership that I have wit- nessed from many of the greatest football players to ever play the game. If you have ever aspired to be a leader, or need to take your leadership skills to the highest levels, this is the book for you—all you need to do is take the challenge!”

—Brent Jones, former All-Pro football player; managing partner, Northgate Capital

“The Leadership Challenge is the best research-based practical field guide for leaders I have ever read. While the world around us has changed significantly since 1987, when I picked up the first edition of the book, the simple relevant truths of what great leaders do has not. I love the personal best leadership stories that highlight the five simple-to-understand exemplary practices that really matter. Great leaders are lifelong learners, and there is no better place to start or continue your leader- ship learning journey than to read this book.”

—James Foster, senior vice president, chief product supply officer, the Clorox Company

“Whether you are just beginning your leadership journey, are a seasoned CEO, or a professor of leadership, this timeless leadership classic needs to be within constant reach!”

—Harry Kraemer Jr., former chairman and CEO, Baxter International; professor of management and strategy, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management

“There are hundreds of leadership books on the market, and you’ll probably get something out of each of them, but none are so solidly based on research as The Leadership Challenge. This is the book that goes beyond opinion and guides you to those behaviors that bring out the strength in others.”

—Janelle Barlow, author, A Complaint Is a Gift and Branded Customer Service

“The Leadership Challenge is the first book I recommend to all new leaders in Kaiser Permanente. Twenty-five years after it was first written, it remains the best guide to leadership success, and in a time of global competition and economic uncer- tainty, the principles elucidated by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner serve as a powerful foundation for any individual hoping to help others innovate and embrace change. Leaders should be required to re-read this book every five years of their career.”

—Robert Pearl, MD, executive director and CEO, the Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente

“Seldom, it seems, have I been in the office of an HR professional where I did not see a copy of The Leadership Challenge. The book has become a go-to source for professionals looking for insight into leadership development. Now Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have gone back to the well to create an all-new fifth edition. While The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are as timely as ever, the stories are fresh and the insights are just as compelling. Simple and accessible, The Leader- ship Challenge is so packed with information that people who care about leadership need to put it on their shelves—but only after reading it cover to cover.”

—John Baldoni, president, Baldoni Consulting LLC; author, Lead With Purpose, Lead Your Boss, and Lead By Example

“It is truly laudatory that Jim and Barry are celebrating the twenty-fifth year of a book that never lost its appeal. The authors have observed, interviewed, consulted, taught, and thought for all those years, and they continually bring us the best stories, examples, and lessons to keep their work ever green. Bravo and thank you!”

—Beverly Kaye, founder, co-CEO, Career Systems International; coauthor, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go

“Speaking from experience, it’s not easy to make research findings engaging, practi- cal, and a pleasure to read. In this new edition of The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have once again found that elusive balance between focusing on the data and telling a great story. No other leadership book is as compelling, as comprehensive, or as effective in teaching us how to go about making the changes we must make, in order to become the kind of leaders who can move mountains. If you could read only one book about the art and science of leading, then this is without question the book you should read.”

—Heidi Grant Halvorson, author, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

“The Leadership Challenge is a proven, data-driven model for leadership that has stood the test of time. The simple, effective framework works across industries and cultures, helping leaders engage their organizations and deliver superior perfor- mance; this has never been more important than in today’s interconnected, fast- moving world.”

—Mike Splinter, CEO, Applied Materials

“The Leadership Challenge has re-energized leadership at Applied Materials. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership provide a commonsense approach that is within the reach of anybody who needs to get work done through others.”

—Mary Humiston, senior vice president, global human resources, Applied Materials

“Kouzes and Posner have given us a handbook of hope: leadership can be learned at almost any level in an organization. The book provides identifiable skills, prac- tices, and abilities available to anyone willing to develop themselves—not just those charismatic personalities at the top. Research-based, conversationally written, and practically applied, The Leadership Challenge is absolutely the most compre- hensive and credible book on leadership to date.”

––Dianna Booher, author, Creating Personal Presence

“The Leadership Challenge has gone from being a revelation to a standard to a classic. It is now the defining book on leadership for our time, and there is not a business, government, academic, or military leader in the developed world who, consciously or not, has not been taught its lessons.”

—Mike Malone, associate fellow at Said Business School (Oxford); author, Bill & Dave

“When Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner write on leadership, all of us had better pay attention. The fifth edition of The Leadership Challenge will quickly become a classic. Stop what you are doing and start reading, leading, and achieving.”

—Pat Williams, senior vice president, Orlando Magic; author, Leadership Excellence

“The Leadership Challenge includes real-life stories of globally diverse and inclusive people sharing their personal leadership challenges and learnings. From these real- life stories and the authors’ extensive fact-based research, Jim and Barry challenge each of us to continually improve our leadership skills and inspire others to do the same, and give us the formula to do just that. This book is as close to the bible on leadership as you will find. From business person to family person anywhere in the world, it has lessons on leadership for all.”

—Stephen Almassy, global vice chair, OCA/Industry, Ernst & Young Global Limited

“For the last twenty years, I have been lucky enough to have worked with some of the world’s best mentors in the field of leadership development. Very few, I have discovered, are equally comfortable in both the ivory tower and corporate board- room. Jim and Barry have found the sweet spot and showcase it brilliantly in The Leadership Challenge. It’s hard to think of a book that has had more of an influence on my own writing, as well as my own practice advising corporate boards on CEO succession, than this landmark book. Although I could continue gushing for pages about the contributions that Jim and Barry have made to the field of leadership, I can boil down my thoughts into just two words: thank you!”

—Jeffrey Cohn, coauthor, Why Are We Bad at Picking Good Leaders?

“Nobody knows leadership better than Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. They use real, current, and practical illustrations of what leadership looks like and then demon- strate how to improve its practice. A must-read for every leader, The Leadership Challenge should be a part of every entrepreneur and intrapreneur’s business plan!”

—Carol Sands, managing member, the Angels’ Forum

“Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner know how to draw upon what we know (the evi- dence) to describe and teach what we need to do (through examples and reflection exercises) in order to be more effective health care leaders. The book is as appropri- ate, accessible, and helpful for new leaders as it is for those with years of experience. I have personally observed current and future leaders using this book to strengthen their leadership and personal effectiveness.”

—Christy Harris Lemak, director, the Griffith Leadership Center in Health Management and Policy; associate professor, health management and policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health

“Jim and Barry start from the most basic aspect of leadership: that human beings need purpose, values, and respect to be motivated. Given their starting point, it is perhaps not surprising that they hit the mark. Still the best book out there on leadership.”

—Ken Wilcox, chairman, Silicon Valley Bank

“For twenty-five years The Leadership Challenge has been a source of inspiration and insight for some of the best educators I know. In this latest edition, Kouzes and Posner have added important wisdom and updated thinking to their work. The Leadership Challenge is indispensable reading for those who take on the leadership of our schools.”

—Kevin Skelly, superintendent, Palo Alto Unified School District

“The nation’s health care system is in transition with significant system and eco- nomic changes. Physician leadership will be necessary to make this transformation successful, while maintaining the focus on our patients. The Leadership Challenge gives present and future physician leaders the leadership practices that will make them both better leaders and physicians.”

—Fernando Mendoza, MD, MPH; professor and chief, Division of General Pediatrics; service chief, general pediatrics, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital; associate dean of Minority Advising and Programs, School of Medicine, Stanford University

“Up-to-date, superbly compelling, and full of heart, the fifth edition of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s classic draws on an unmatched trove of new data to offer fresh context to the fundamentals of great leadership. The Leadership Challenge remains the essential text for leaders who want to achieve the extraordinary in today’s hypercompetitive environment.”

—Sally Helgesen, author, The Female Advantage

“Peter Drucker would probably have called the publishing of Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s book The Leadership Challenge ‘a distinguished public service.’ There is no doubt that it was that and that the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this wonder- ful book continues to show organizations how to get extraordinary things done.”

—William A. Cohen, Major General, USAFR, Ret; author of Drucker on Leadership and Heroic Leadership

“This fifth edition of The Leadership Challenge is Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s gift to leaders in the twenty-first century. Join them and hundreds of thousands of others using this guide to extraordinary leadership.”

— Geoff Bellman, consultant; author, Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results

“The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Leadership Challenge is another great reference for leaders and would-be leaders globally. Over the years, the Kouzes and Posner five leadership practices have crossed borders, cultures, and generations.”

—Joe Hage, associate CIO, American University of Beirut

“This fifth edition of The Leadership Challenge continues as a must-read for any global leader or aspiring leader. The Leadership Challenge has been my compass in guiding and developing as a leader, developing other leaders, and in engaging future leaders. Barry and Jim’s research reinforces that active learning and unending practice are foundational for leaders. To be a compelling leader, mastery of the principles of The Leadership Challenge is absolutely essential.”

—Bill Maxwell, former senior vice president, human resources, Oakwood Temporary Housing

“In the midst of great change, sometimes it is important to return to timeless ideas. In their twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner reframe their leadership principles for global challenges in the twenty-first century. If you read it before, it’s time to read it again. If you haven’t read it, expect a master class on leadership in these turbulent times.”

—Joel Barker, author, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future

“The precious message of this insightful and important book is that leadership does not attach to a job or any position. It is seized, by a combination of credibility and courage. In a world where too many are simply milling around, here is a primer for taking charge.”

—Irwin Federman, general partner, US Venture Partners

“As the entire economy undergoes a fundamental phase change, in which both the organization and the workplace are being reinvented before our very eyes, a new generation of leaders will find in the deep insights and engaging stories of this updated edition of The Leadership Challenge the guidance they require.”

—Stephen Denning, author, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management

“This classic has improved with age. Fresh examples and global cases make the fifth edition of The Leadership Challenge more relevant to more relationships than ever.”

—Tim Scudder and Michael Patterson, coauthors, Have a Nice Conflict

“Few leadership books stand the test of time, but The Leadership Challenge continues to show the path to being a leader of substance. Filled with great examples and rooted in rock solid research, it is a must-read for every leader.”

—John B. Izzo, author, Stepping Up

THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE MOBILE TOOL

We have developed a mobile tool to work with the concepts and practices within this book that you can use to help yourself along on your leadership journey and development path. The Leadership Challenge Mobile Tool Lite app is free and works with the Take Action sections at the ends of chapters Two through Eleven, adding utility and functionality to the activities located there. The app allows you to immediately integrate some of these Take Action activities into your daily life, making them an ongoing and natural part of your behavioral and attitudinal repertoire. Features include the ability to create and track your own personal Take Action plan, create remind- ers, and share via social media.

The complete Leadership Challenge Mobile Tool is even more robust with everything in the lite version and additional features such as the ability to seamlessly request-and-receive feedback, email activi- ties, and use calendar reminders. It also has more content, including all of the Take Action activities in the book, videos of the authors, a concise overview of The Leadership Challenge model, daily inspira- tional quotes, and a news feed. Initially available in the Apple App Store and others to come, on an ongoing basis, we will develop this app to fit your needs.

Visit www.leadershipchallenge.com/go/tlcapp to learn more.

http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/go/tlcapp
THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

F I F T H E D I T I O N

How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations

J A M E S M . K O U Z E S B A R R Y Z . P O S N E R

Copyright © 2012 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200 San Francisco, CA 94104-4594—www.josseybass.com

Author photo by John Brennan

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646- 8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley. com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kouzes, James M. The leadership challenge : how to make extraordinary things happen in organizations / James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner.—5th ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-65172-8 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-28196-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-

28248-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-28431-5 (ebk) 1. Leadership. 2. Executive ability. 3. Management. I. Posner, Barry Z. II. Title. HD57.7.K68 2012 658.4'092—dc23 2012005728 Printed in the United States of America fifth edition HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

Introduction: Making Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations 1

1 When Leaders Are at Their Best 9 The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership—Leadership Is a Relationship—Putting It All Together: Credibility Is the Foundation

PRACTICE 1 MODEL THE WAY 41

2 Clarify Values 43 Find Your Voice—Affirm Shared Values

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S 3 Set the Example 71 Live the Shared Values—Teach Others to Model the Values

PRACTICE 2 INSPIRE A SHARED VISION 99

4 Envision the Future 101 Imagine the Possibilities—Find a Common Purpose

5 Enlist Others 127 Appeal to Common Ideals—Animate the Vision

PRACTICE 3 CHALLENGE THE PROCESS 155

6 Search for Opportunities 157 Seize the Initiative—Exercise Outsight

7 Experiment and Take Risks 185 Generate Small Wins—Learn from Experience

PRACTICE 4 ENABLE OTHERS TO ACT 213

8 Foster Collaboration 215 Create a Climate of Trust—Facilitate Relationships

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9 Strengthen Others 241 Enhance Self-Determination—Develop Competence and Confidence

PRACTICE 5 ENCOURAGE THE HEART 271

10 Recognize Contributions 273 Expect the Best—Personalize Recognition

11 Celebrate the Values and Victories 301 Create a Spirit of Community—Get Personally Involved

12 Leadership Is Everyone’s Business 329 Look to Leaders Everywhere—Know How Important You Are—Practice—Reflect—Remain Humble and Human—Seize the Moment—Remember the Secret to Success in Life

Notes 347 Acknowledgments 375 About the Authors 379 Index 383

For Tae and Jackie

with all our love.

Thank you for all you do and

all that you have given us.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Making Extraordinary

Things Happen in Organizations

LEADERS GET PEOPLE MOVING. They energize and mobi- lize. They take people and organizations to places they have never been before. Leadership is not a fad, and the leadership challenge never goes away.

In uncertain and turbulent times, accepting that challenge is the only antidote to chaos, stagnation, and disintegration. Times change, problems change, technologies change, and people change. Leader- ship endures. Teams, organizations, and communities need people to step up and take charge. That is why we first wrote The Leadership Challenge, and why we found it imperative to write this fifth edition.

Change is the province of leaders. It is the work of leaders to inspire people to do things differently, to struggle against uncertain odds, and to persevere toward a misty image of a better future. Without leadership there would not be the extraordinary efforts necessary to solve existing problems and realize unimagined

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G E opportunities. We have today, at best, only faint clues of what the

future may hold, but we are confident that without leadership the possibilities will neither be envisioned nor attained.

THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

The Leadership Challenge is about how leaders mobilize others to want to make extraordinary things happen in organizations. It’s about the practices leaders use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards. It’s about leadership that creates the climate in which people turn challenging opportunities into remarkable successes.

The publication of this edition of The Leadership Challenge marks twenty-five years since the book was first released. We’ve spent more than three decades together researching, consulting, teaching, and writing about what leaders do and how everyone can learn to be a better leader. We’re honored by the reception we’ve received in the professional and business marketplace. Although we and other authors regularly contribute new works, we are blessed that students, educators, and practitioners continue to find that The Leadership Challenge is still useful to them, both conceptually and practically, and that it stands the test of time.

We persist in asking today the same basic question we asked in 1982 when we started our journey into understanding exemplary leadership: What did you do when you were at your personal best as a leader? We’ve talked to men and women, young and old, represent- ing just about every type of organization there is, at all levels, in all functions, from many different places around the world. Their stories, and the behaviors and actions they’ve described, have resulted

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in the creation of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® framework described in this book. When leaders do their best, they Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.

The Leadership Challenge is evidence based. The Five Practices are derived from research and we illustrate them with examples from real people doing real things. With each edition of the book, we update the research—both our own findings and those from other scholars around the globe. And we continue to update the stories, cases, and examples of exactly what people do when they are at their best as leaders.

With each new edition, we become clearer ourselves about what really makes a difference. We get the chance to reiterate what’s still important, to discard what’s not, and to add what’s new. We get the chance to contemporize the framework and freshen up the language and point of view so that the book is highly relevant to current circumstances and conditions. We get the chance to let go of tan- gents—those important but smaller points that can be distracting or make things more complicated than they need to be. We get the chance to be more prescriptive about the best practices of leaders. The more we research and the more we write about leadership, the more confident we become that leadership is within the grasp of everyone and that the opportunities for leadership are boundless and boundaryless.

Of course, with each edition, we also get to address a new audi- ence, and sometimes even a new generation of emerging leaders. That opportunity motivates us to collect new cases, examine new research findings, and talk with people we haven’t heard from. It encourages us to perform a litmus test of relevance on our results: Does this model of leadership make sense? If we started out all over again, would we find new leadership practices? Would we eliminate

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G E any of the practices? In this regard, we are aided by the ongoing

empirical data provided by the online version of the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI). This inventory, which assesses The Five Practices, provides 500,000 to 750,000 responses annually and keeps us on guard and on target in identifying the behaviors that make a difference—and the ones that don’t seem to matter.

And, with each new edition, we get a chance to speak again with those of you who have read earlier editions of The Leadership Chal- lenge in school or in the workplace. If you’re reading this book for the first time, welcome. If you are returning to it again, welcome back. Join us in reading this new edition so that you can learn about and be reminded of The Five Practices and what they look like in action today. Learn more about how you can continue to grow and to develop yourself as leader.

We expect that all of you face vexing issues that not only make leadership more urgent but also require you to be more conscious and conscientious about being a leader. Others are looking to you to help them figure out what they should be doing and how they can develop themselves to be leaders. You don’t just owe it to yourself to become the best leader you can possibly be. You’re even more responsible to others. You may not know it, but they’re expecting you to do your best.

A FIELD GUIDE FOR LEADERS

How do you get other people to want to follow you? How do you get other people, by free will and free choice, to move forward together on a common purpose? How do you mobilize others to want to struggle to achieve shared aspirations? These are the impor- tant questions we address in The Leadership Challenge. Think of it as

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a field guide to take along on your leadership journey. Think of it as a manual you can consult when you want advice and counsel on how to get extraordinary things done in your organization.

In Chapter One, we establish our point of view about leadership by sharing a Personal-Best Leadership Experience—a case study about how one leader helped turn her organization around and develop it into an award-winning venture. We provide an overview of The Five Practices, summarize the findings from our more than three decades of empirical studies about what leaders do when they are at their best, and show that these leadership practices make a difference.

Asking leaders about their personal bests is only half the story. Leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers. A com- plete picture of leadership can be developed only if you ask followers what they look for and admire in a leader. In the second part of Chapter One, we reveal what characteristics people value most in their leaders, and demonstrate that credibility is the foundation of the relationship between leaders and their constituents.

The ten chapters that follow describe The Ten Commitments of Leadership—the essential behaviors that leaders employ to make extraordinary things happen—and explain the fundamental princi- ples that support each of The Five Practices. We offer evidence from our research, and that of others, to support the principles, provide actual case examples of real people who demonstrate each practice, and prescribe specific recommendations of what you can do to make each practice your own and to continue your development as a leader. A Take Action section concludes each of these chapters— here’s what you need to do to make this leadership practice an ongoing and natural part of your behavioral and attitudinal reper- toire. Whether the focus is your own learning or the development of your constituents—your direct reports, team, peers, manager, community members, and the like—you can take immediate action

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G E on every one of our recommendations. They don’t require a budget

or approval from top management—or anyone else. They just require your personal commitment and discipline. If you’d like a mobile partner or tool to help you take action along your leadership journey and development path, download The Leadership Challenge Mobile Tool app, which has been designed to work with these sections, the activities within, and the practices in general.

In Chapter Twelve, we offer a call to everyone to accept personal responsibility to be a role model for leadership. Through five editions now of The Leadership Challenge, we keep relearning and reminding ourselves and others that leadership is everyone’s business. The first place to look for leadership is within yourself. Accepting the leader- ship challenge requires practice, reflection, humility, and commit- ment to making a difference. And, in the end, we conclude that leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.

We recommend that you first read Chapter One, but please note that after that there is no sacred order to proceeding through the rest of this book. Go wherever your interests take you. We wrote this material to support you in your leadership development. Just remem- ber that each practice is essential. Although you might skip around in the book, you can’t skip any of the fundamentals of leadership.

Finally, technology allows us to offer you insights beyond those in this book. On our Web site www.theleadershipchallenge.com, you can find out more about how we conducted our research, look at detailed information on our methodology, review statistical data, read highlights of validation studies by other scholars of our leader- ship paradigm, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.

The domain of leaders is the future. The leader’s unique legacy is the creation of valued institutions that survive over time. The most

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significant contribution leaders make is not simply to today’s bottom line; it is to the long-term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow. We hope this book contributes to the revitalization of organizations, to the creation of new enterprises, to the renewal of healthy communities, and to greater respect and understanding in the world. We also fervently hope that it enriches your life and that of your community and your family.

Leadership is important, not just in your career and within your organization, but in every sector, in every community, and in every country. We need more exemplary leaders, and we need them more than ever. There is so much extraordinary work that needs to be done. We need leaders who can unite us and ignite us.

In the end, we realize that leadership development is self- development. Meeting the leadership challenge is a personal—and daily—challenge for everyone. We know that if you have the will and the way to lead, you can. You have to supply the will. We’ll do our best to keep supplying the way.

James M. Kouzes Orinda, California

Barry Z. Posner Santa Clara, California

May 2012

C H A P T E R 1

When Leaders Are at Their Best

“FEARLESS.” That’s what it says in bold white letters on a black bracelet that Barby Siegel wears.1 She borrowed it from her teenage daughter to serve as a daily reminder of the spirit she likes to bring to her role as CEO of Zeno Group, an award-winning, multidisci- plinary public relations firm. And it’s exactly that kind of spirit that fueled the extraordinary growth and willingness to take risks that PRWeek cited in 2011 when it awarded Zeno two of its top honors— Agency of the Year and Midsize Agency of the Year.

But Zeno wasn’t always at the head of its class. When Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Zeno’s parent company, Daniel J. Edelman, Inc., called Barby and asked her to lead Zeno to the next level, the agency was languishing. Barby, who had honed her craft over eleven years at Edelman and then for eight years at Ogilvy PR, where she restarted their global consumer marketing practice, was ready for a new opportunity and challenge.

Barby knew Zeno had a great team and a solid client base, but for them to grow to the next level, she believed that they had to get

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of that fearlessness that she proudly advocates for with her bracelet. She would tell them, “We need to stand on our own two feet and not be afraid because we’re Zeno that we can’t go after this piece of business or that we’re not going to be taken seriously.” She talked about it as “playing ahead of the game—ahead of where we really were.” It didn’t take long for this focused determination and can-do spirit to spread.

One of Barby’s early actions was to hold a day-and-a-half leader- ship team meeting with her direct reports. Together they talked about such basic questions as “Who are we? What are we focusing on?” The conversations and sharing of ideas were galvanizing, and during that meeting they came up with the words that they envi- sioned as describing themselves. These words—fearless, collaborative, creative, decidedly different, and nimble—are their values and their promise to their clients.

Zeno describes itself as providing “senior level strategy and day- to-day engagement” and as having “no silos,” and you can see this in Barby’s actions. For example, she has spent many a night in the conference room with team members preparing decks for client presentations. And if she’s not working on a presentation, she might be at the local grocer buying snacks to take back to the room. She’s present at client pitches. She also spends as much time as she can with staff. Barby takes this responsibility seriously. “I often say, ‘I am privileged to lead this team.’ I am. Without them we’d be nothing. I need all these people to bring their best game every day. I wake up every day and say, What can I do to make sure these people are happy and energetic, that they’re going to stay and continue to give our clients their best work every day?”

These sentiments are reciprocated by her associates. Alison Walsh, account supervisor, affirms that “when you have a CEO who

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is so ingrained in the agency, staff, and each and every one of the clients, you only want to push yourself further.” Because Barby is so transparent about her values and vision for the organization, “There’s no question,” according to Alison, “that people want to follow her.”

Barby describes the Zeno corporate culture as one that promotes hard work and continued success while also encouraging work-life balance and individualism. “I’m sure many companies describe themselves as a family,” says Barby. “We take it seriously.” For example, there are a lot of women in the firm, and Barby takes her role as a woman CEO very seriously. “I want them to see that it’s possible to have a really great career and have a family and do all the things that that entails.” She talks a lot about her own kids, her husband, her two older sisters, and her elderly parents. She’ll tell her staff when she goes out to have lunch with her parents. “I want them to know that it’s okay to get out of the office for a couple of hours and tend to their families.” She has a photo gallery in her office with lots of family pictures displayed along with photos of agency get- togethers and some of the staff and their babies. “I’m very mindful,” says Barby, “that the staff is like me. We all have mortgages to pay. Many have children to raise. When I make decisions about what the firm is going to do, I am mindful that at the end of the day there are hundreds of families depending on our doing right for our clients.”

Unlike traditional agencies, Zeno is an organization without walls, where everyone, regardless of level, routinely works together on all aspects of a client engagement. “Everyone is treated with great respect,” said Cheryl Pellegrino, senior vice president. “There is a strong sense of collaboration and teamwork. People genuinely like one another and work well together. It’s all for one and one for all.” Barby has structured the organization and assignments so that people

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celebrate together. Marcie Kohenak, account supervisor, adds that whereas many agencies may say they’re one team, “Zeno walks the walk. Never before have I worked in an office where colleagues are so collaborative, looking out for clients and the teams before them- selves, and where individuals from different offices and fields are always working together. Not only does this attitude benefit our clients, who are always being served by a subject matter expert, but as employees we have the opportunity to constantly grow, working with and learning from colleagues across the country.”

Zeno is also unique in the PR business in how it manages its books: all offices operate under one P&L. If a client in Chicago needs the expertise of someone in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, or São Paulo, there’s no conflict or conversation about it. Barby said that this means that “the staff can just do their best work, and don’t need to feel pulled by one P&L or another. Everyone is focusing on our client’s success.”

Collaborating across offices to get the job done also facilitates innovation and experimentation. Creativity is hugely important to Barby. “We want to be creative in everything we do, even in the most mundane tasks,” she said. This is what, in large part, keeps Jessica Vitale, vice president, with Zeno. “You get countless opportunities to work on exciting projects for clients who are leaders in their field, and the chance to work alongside incredibly smart, passionate people across multiple offices who provide great support and encourage, even push, you to grow,” she said. This learning environment, Barby explained, “helps all of us to think differently, to be unafraid to experiment and try some things that have not been done before.”

There are many celebrations over the year, such as the Friday after-work sing-alongs and other informal get-togethers and recogni-

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tions. Barby established an annual New Year’s Eve party every June 30, the end of Zeno’s fiscal year. On that day, all the offices connect by teleconference. They pop champagne and raise a virtual toast. Barby reflects on what they’ve accomplished and talks about what’s ahead in the future. Then all the offices continue with their own celebrations.

In an end-of-year email to her staff, Barby summed up Zeno’s achievements and culture:

Each of you played a major role in the success of our firm, and each of you are key to the journey that continues. . . . [Words of praise] should be aimed squarely at you for the amazing work you and your teams have delivered and the ever-deepening client partnerships you are forging. . . . As we close out the year, I am more excited than ever for what’s to come, and there isn’t a group of professionals I would rather do it with day in and day out.

We have much to look forward to. Some days will be harder than others but we are on a mission to take this firm to greater heights on the shoulders of client trust and partnership, game-changing work and a talented and highly motivated staff. I think we have seen that when we band together we can really do it.

Barby is not one to rest on her laurels, though. The recognition Zeno has earned is just the beginning. “I can’t just live in the present,” she said. “I’ve got to always be thinking about the next thing we should be working on and where we’re headed, whether geographically or with innovation or talent.” No doubt that the next thing is likely to require more of that same fearlessness that got Barby and her colleagues to where they are today.

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G E THE FIVE PRACTICES OF

EXEMPLARY LEADERSHIP

In undertaking the transformation at Zeno, Barby Siegel seized the opportunity to change business as usual. And although Barby’s story is exceptional, it is not singular. We’ve been conducting original global research for more than thirty years, and we’ve discovered that such achievements are actually commonplace. When we ask people to tell us about their personal-best leadership experiences—experi- ences that they believe are their individual standards of excellence— there are thousands of success stories just like Barby’s.2 We’ve found them in profit-based firms and nonprofits, agriculture and mining, manufacturing and utilities, banking and health care, government and education, the arts and community service, and many, many others. These leaders are employees and volunteers, young and old, women and men. Leadership knows no racial or religious bounds, no ethnic or cultural borders. Leaders reside in every city and every country, in every function and every organization. We find exem- plary leadership everywhere we look.

And we’ve also found that in the best organizations, everyone, regardless of title or position, is encouraged to act like a leader. That’s because in these places, people don’t just believe that everyone can make a difference; they act in ways to develop and grow people’s talents, including their leadership capabilities. Joon Chin Fum-Ko, director of people development and engagement at Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, underscores this thinking when she explains how they are “working to build an organization and culture where everyone feels that they are leaders, regardless of what they do, and appreciates that what each one of us does has an impact, even a legacy.”

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We first asked people in the early 1980s to tell us what they did when they were at their “personal best” in leading others, and we continue to ask this question of people around the world. After analyzing thousands of these leadership experiences, we discovered, and continue to find, that regardless of the times or setting, people who guide others along pioneering journeys follow surprisingly similar paths. Although each experience was unique in its individual expression, there were clearly identifiable behaviors and actions that made a difference. When making extraordinary things happen in organizations, leaders engage in what we call The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. They

• Model the Way • Inspire a Shared Vision • Challenge the Process • Enable Others to Act • Encourage the Heart

These leadership practices are not the private property of the people we studied. Nor do they belong to a few select shining stars. Leadership is not about who you are; it’s about what you do. The Five Practices are available to anyone who accepts the leadership challenge—the challenge of taking people and organizations to places they have never been before, of doing something that has never been done before, and of moving beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Although the context of leadership has changed dramatically since we first began our research thirty years ago, the content of leadership has not changed much at all. The Five Practices frame- work has passed the test of time. Our research tells us that the fundamental behaviors and actions of leaders have remained

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first began our study of exemplary leadership. You’ve already learned how one leader (Barby Siegel) used The

Five Practices to lead her colleagues and organization to greatness, and how she and they are not ready to rest on their laurels. In the remainder of this chapter, we briefly introduce each of The Five Practices and provide short examples that demonstrate how leaders across a variety of circumstances use them to make the extraordinary happen. When you explore The Five Practices in depth in Chapters Two through Eleven, you’ll find over a hundred more examples from the real-life experiences of people who have taken the leadership challenge.

Model the Way

Titles are granted, but it’s your behavior that earns you respect. This sentiment was shared across all the cases we collected. David Kim, senior operations manager with Siemens Ultrasound, reflecting on his personal-best leadership experience, remarked that “Everybody is a leader whether you supervise a group of people or not. Even as an individual contributor when I transitioned into the corporate world from the army, I continued to display leadership and take initiative to get the job done. Titles don’t make you a leader. It’s how you behave that makes a difference.” Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.

To effectively Model the Way, you must first be clear about your own guiding principles. You must clarify values by finding your voice. Dave Halvorson, staff engineer with Intel, observed that “you do not need to be a manager with direct reports to be a leader, but you do have to know what your values and guiding principles are.” Alan

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Spiegelman, veteran wealth management adviser with Northwestern Mutual, reinforced Dave’s point when he told us, “Before you can be a leader of others, you need to know clearly who you are and what your core values are. Once you know that, then you can give those values a voice and feel comfortable sharing them with others.” But your values aren’t the only values. On every team, and in every organization and community, others also feel strongly about matters of principle. As a leader, you also must affirm the shared values of the group.

Eloquent speeches about common values aren’t nearly enough, however. Leaders’ deeds are far more important than their words when constituents want to determine how serious leaders really are about what they say. Words and deeds must be consistent. Exem- plary leaders set the example by aligning actions with shared values. Through their daily actions, they demonstrate their deep commit- ment to their beliefs and those of the organization. Dr. Jiangwan Majeti’s experience as research project manager at Amgen under- scores this observation: “Leading by example is more effective than leading by command. If people see that you work hard while preach- ing hard work, they are more likely to follow you.” One of the best ways to prove that something is important is by doing it yourself and setting an example. Jiangwan’s actions spoke volumes about how the team needed to “take ownership of things they believed in and valued,” because there wasn’t anything that she asked others to do that she wasn’t willing to do herself.

Inspire a Shared Vision

People describe their personal-best leadership experiences as times when they imagined an exciting, highly attractive future for their organizations. They had visions and dreams of what could be. They

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confident in their abilities to make extraordinary things happen. Every organization, every social movement, begins with a dream. The dream, or vision, is the force that creates the future. For Taryn Walker, product manager at Kaiser Permanente, this meant “remain- ing focused on the long-term vision and constantly reminding others (often when they became discouraged) of the ultimate outcome and how important this was.”

Leaders envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. You need to make something happen, to change the way things are, to create something that no one else has ever created before. Much as an architect draws a blueprint or an engineer builds a model, you need to have a clear vision of what the results should look like before starting any project. You also have to be able to connect it to the past, to the history that got you to where you are. In starting the “Thinker’s Club” at Juniper Networks, for example, Vittal Krishnamurthy imagined “that one day it would be a hub for innovative thinking, where people brainstorm on some of the most difficult issues and seek innovative solutions, and the go-to place where creative solutions emerge.” He wanted to improve the quality of people’s lives by making them creative thinkers, but he also real- ized that however noble this aspiration, visions seen only by leaders are insufficient to create an organized movement or a significant change in a company.

You can’t command commitment; you have to inspire it. You have to enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspira- tions. This means, as Rajan Prajapat, product manager at Google, pointed out, “that you have to have a vision in mind and be clear about why it’s important to you. And you need to be equally clear about why it should matter to those you’re sharing your vision

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with.” Rupessh Roy, project manager at NetLogic Microsystems, realized in his personal-best leadership experience that people have to believe that you understand their needs and have their interests at heart. “You need to have clear goals and a vision to make a posi- tive difference,” he said, “and you have to be able to share that vision with others and get them to believe in it.” Unity of purpose is forged when you show your constituents how the dream is a shared dream and how it fulfills the common good. When you express your enthu- siasm and excitement for the vision, you ignite that passion in others.

Challenge the Process

Challenge is the crucible for greatness. Every single personal-best leadership case involved a change from the status quo. Not one person claimed to have achieved a personal best by keeping things the same. The challenge might have been an innovative new product, a cutting-edge service, a groundbreaking piece of legislation, an invigorating campaign to get adolescents to join an environmental program, a revolutionary turnaround of a bureaucratic military program, or the start-up of a new plant or business. It could also be dealing with unexpected economic downturns, personal betrayal, loss of physical ability, natural disasters, civil unrest, and technologi- cal disruptions. When Katherine Winkel, marketing operations manager at Seattle Genetics, reflected on her personal best and lis- tened to those of her colleagues, she was struck by “how similar the stories were and how each person had to overcome uncertainty and fear in order to achieve his or her best.”

Leaders venture out; they don’t sit idly by waiting for fate to smile on them. This was exactly what Rob Pearson, now R&D manager with Angiodynamics, experienced in his first job after

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me when I had to choose between being passive (guaranteed to fail) or seizing the initiative and bending the rules to suit my needs (increasing the possibility of success). I decided to rise up and meet the challenge head on.” By making something happen, Rob was able to move his project forward.

Leaders are pioneers, willing to step out into the unknown. But leaders aren’t the only creators or originators of new products, ser- vices, or processes. In fact, it’s more likely that they’re not. Innova- tion comes more from listening than from telling. You have to constantly be looking outside yourself and your organization for new and innovative products, processes, and services. You need to search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and by looking outward for innovative ways to improve.

Because innovation and change involve experimenting and taking risks, your major contribution will be to create a climate for experi- mentation in which there is recognition of good ideas, support of those ideas, and the willingness to challenge the system. Taking risks, says Ryan Diemer, business planner and purchasing analyst at Stryker Endoscopy, “is never easy and sometimes scary.” But what he learned from his personal-best leadership experience is “that taking risks is necessary because it requires you and those you are working with to challenge not only what you are working on but how you work. Sometimes the risks pay off and sometimes they do not, but what is always true is that if you do not take a risk, you won’t get any gain.”

When you take risks, mistakes and failures are inevitable. Proceed anyway. One way of dealing with the potential failures of experi- mentation is by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience. Pierfrancesco Ronzi, associate with McKinsey & Company in Italy, recalled how, in successfully turning around the credit

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process for a banking client in North Africa, it was necessary to break the project down into parts so that people in the organization could find a place to start, to determine what would work and how they could learn from one another in the process of moving forward. “Showing them that we were able to make something happen,” he said, “was a great boost for their confidence in the project and their willingness to stay involved.” As Pierfrancesco suggests, leaders are constantly learning from their errors and failures as they experi- ment, try new things, and incrementally move projects forward. The best leaders are the simply the best learners, and life is their laboratory.3

Enable Others to Act

A grand dream doesn’t become a significant reality through the actions of a single person. It requires a team effort. It requires solid trust and strong relationships. It requires deep competence and cool confidence. It requires group collaboration and individual account- ability.4 Sushma Bhope, program manager at Biomass NPL, appreci- ated how she had to “lead by empowering those around you.” In consolidating a customer relationship management system across a globally dispersed company, she realized clearly that “no one could have done this alone.” As other leaders have experienced, Sushma found that “it was essential to be open to all ideas and to give everyone a voice in the decision-making process. . . . The one guiding principle on the project was that the team was larger than any individual on the team.” Sushma clearly understands that no leader has ever gotten anything extraordinary done by working solo.

Leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships. This sense of teamwork extends far beyond a few

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make the project work—and, in some way, all who must live with the results. Early in her career, Lorena Compeán, founder of Co- Creating Hong Kong, discovered that she needed to trust that other people on the project team could and would do their jobs. As the project manager, she found herself, at the beginning, “checking every single analysis they did, but I noticed how they got angry with me because I didn’t let them conclude anything by themselves.” She discovered that she needed to “show my trust in others in order to build their trust in me.”

Constituents neither perform at their best nor stick around for very long if you make them feel weak, dependent, or alienated. Giving your power away and fostering their personal power and ownership will make them stronger and more capable. When you strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence, they are more likely to give it their all and exceed their own expectations. Heidi Winkler, attorney-at-law with Pihl, a privately held construction company in Denmark, learned from reflecting on her personal-best leadership experience “how much easier it is to achieve shared goals (or even make goals shared) when you involve people in the decisions to be made, trust them to handle the execution, and give them responsibilities and credit along the way.”

Focusing on serving the needs of others, and not one’s own, builds trust in a leader. And the more that people trust their leaders and each other, the more they take risks, make changes, and keep organizations and movements alive. Derek Rupnow, business devel- opment manager at Broadcom, points out that “you develop trust and respect by building personal relationships, as well as treating everyone with respect, and making sure to keep everyone up to speed on what is going on.” He seeks out the opinions of others and uses

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the ensuing discussions not only to build up their capabilities but also to educate and update his own information and perspective. Derek realizes that when people are trusted and have more discre- tion, more authority, and more information, they’re much more likely to use their energies to produce extraordinary results. Through that relationship, leaders turn their constituents into leaders themselves.

Encourage the Heart

The climb to the top is arduous and steep. People become exhausted, frustrated, and disenchanted, and are often tempted to give up. Genuine acts of caring draw people forward. “Recognition is the most powerful currency you have, and it costs you nothing,” says Jessica Herrin, CEO and founder of Stella & Dot, who oversees ten thousand mostly part-time stylists, who sell the jewelry line through private parties. She personally contacts at least ten stylists each day and makes it part of her regular to-do list to find and celebrate suc- cesses.5 Right after Mark Hassin’s company won the MSN-Microsoft Israel’s Interactive Agencies Creative Competition, he sent a picture of the award to everyone on his team along with a note that said, “This is YOUR prize. Go tell your family, your friends––that YOU did this.”

Leaders like Jessica and Mark recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence. Such recognition can be one- to-one or with many people. It can come from dramatic gestures or simple actions. Jennifer Dirking, associate director at Foothill– De Anza Community Colleges Foundation, is always on the lookout for ways to create a climate in which, she says, “people feel cared about and genuinely appreciated.” When her team gets together to debrief an event, they start by acknowledging the aspects that were

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deserved credit. Then, Jennifer explains, “as we evaluate those aspects that we want to improve, it is within this context of overall success. This approach improves morale and contributes to a more coopera- tive work environment.”

It’s part of your job as a leader to show appreciation for people’s contributions and to create a culture of celebrating the values and victories by creating a spirit of community. Recognition and celebra- tion aren’t necessarily about fun and games, though there is a lot of fun and there are a lot of games when people encourage the hearts of their constituents. Neither are they about pretentious ceremonies designed to create some phony sense of camaraderie. Encouragement is, curiously, serious business because it’s how you visibly and behav- iorally link rewards with performance. Make sure that people see the benefit of behavior that’s aligned with cherished values. Celebrations and rituals, when they are authentic and from the heart, build a strong sense of collective identity and community spirit that can carry a group through extraordinarily tough times.

The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are the core leadership competencies that emerged from our analysis of thousands of Personal-Best Leadership Experience cases. When leaders are doing their best, they Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.

These are the practices that people use when they are at their personal best as leaders. But what’s the evidence that they really matter? Do these practices truly make a difference in the engagement and performance of people and organizations? Over the years, we’ve been challenged to answer these questions and to test the assertion that The Five Practices explain how leaders get extraordinary things

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done in organizations. The research and empirical evidence make the case that they do.

The Five Practices Make a Difference

The truth is that exemplary leader behavior makes a profoundly positive difference in people’s commitment and performance at work. Those leaders who more frequently use The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are considerably more effective than their counterparts who use them infrequently.

That is the conclusion we draw after analyzing responses from nearly two million people around the world to the Leadership Prac- tices Inventory (LPI), our 360-degree instrument assessing how frequently leaders engage in The Five Practices.6 In addition to com- pleting the LPI, respondents answer ten demographic questions ranging from their age and gender to their functional field, industry, and organization size.7 They also respond to ten statements about how they feel about their leaders and their workplaces.8

The data show that workplace engagement and commitment are significantly explained by how the leader behaves and not at all by any particular characteristic of the constituents.

Statistical analyses revealed that a leader’s behavior explains the vast majority of constituents’ workplace engagement. A leader’s actions contribute more to such factors as commitment, loyalty, motivation, pride, and productivity than does any other single vari- able.9 Personal and organizational characteristics of constituents, in contrast, explain less than 1 percent of constituents’ engagement in, commitment to, and pride in their workplaces. Workplace engage- ment and commitment are independent of who the constituents are (as related to factors like age, gender, ethnicity, or education) or their

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position, job, discipline, industry, or nationality or country of origin. Figure 1.1 illustrates our findings.

In other words, the more you engage in The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership, the more likely you are to have a positive influence on others and on the organization. As Caroline Wang—at one time the highest-ranking Asian female executive at IBM glob- ally—reflected on her experiences with the Five Practices framework, “It is really not about the leader’s personality; it is all about how that individual behaves as a leader.” That’s what all the data add up to: if you want to have a significant impact on people, on organizations, and on communities, you’d be wise to invest in learning the behav- iors that enable you to become the very best leader you can.

Many other scholars have documented how leaders who engage in The Five Practices are more effective than those who don’t. It doesn’t matter whether the context is inside or outside the United

FIGURE 1.1 Explaining Workplace Engagement and Commitment

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States, the public or private sector, or within schools, health care organizations, business firms, prisons, churches, and the like.10 Leaders who use The Five Practices more frequently than their coun- terparts, for example,

• Create higher-performing teams • Generate increased sales and customer satisfaction levels • Foster renewed loyalty and greater organizational commitment • Enhance motivation and the willingness to work hard • More successfully represent their units to upper management • Facilitate high patient-satisfaction scores and more effectively

meet family member needs • Promote high degrees of involvement in schools • Enlarge the size of their religious congregations • Increase fundraising results and expand gift-giving levels • Extend the range of their agency’s services • Increase retention, reducing absenteeism and turnover • Positively influence recruitment rates

Over a five-year period, the financial performance of organiza- tions where senior leaders were identified by their constituents as “strongly” engaged in using The Five Practices were compared with those organizations whose leadership was significantly less engaged in The Five Practices.11 The bottom line? Net income growth was nearly eighteen times higher, and stock price growth nearly three times higher, than their counterparts for those publicly traded organizations whose leadership was highly engaged in The Five Practices.

Although The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership don’t completely explain why leaders and their organizations are success- ful, it’s very clear that engaging in them makes quite a difference no

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G E matter who you are or where you are located. How you behave as a

leader matters, and it matters a lot. Embedded in The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are

behaviors that can serve as the basis for learning to lead. We call these The Ten Commitments of Leadership (Table 1.1). They focus on actions that you need to apply to yourself and that you need to take with others. These Ten Commitments serve as the template for explaining, understanding, appreciating, and learning how leaders get extraordinary things done in organizations, and we discuss each of them in depth in Chapters Two through Eleven.

Before delving into The Five Practices and The Ten Commit- ments further, however, we’d be remiss if we didn’t consider leader- ship from the standpoint of the constituent. So, what do people look for in a leader? What do people want from someone whose direction they’d be willing to follow?

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Model the Way

1. Clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared values.

2. Set the example by aligning actions with shared values.

Inspire a Shared Vision

3. Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling

possibilities. 4. Enlist others in a common

vision by appealing to shared

aspirations.

Challenge the Process

5. Search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and

looking outward for innovative

ways to improve. 6. Experiment and take risks by

constantly generating small wins and

learning from experience.

Enable Others to Act

7. Foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships.

8. Strengthen others by increasing self-determination and

developing competence.

Encourage the Heart

9. Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual

excellence.

10. Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.

TABLE 1.1 THE FIVE PRACTICES AND TEN COMMITMENTS OF EXEMPLARY LEADERSHIP

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G E LEADERSHIP IS A RELATIONSHIP

The inescapable conclusion from analyzing thousands of personal- best leadership experiences is that everyone has a story to tell. And these stories are much more similar in terms of actions, behaviors, and processes than they are different. The data clearly challenge the myths that leadership is something that you find only at the highest levels of organizations and society or that it’s something reserved for only a handful of charismatic men and women. The notion that there are only a few great people who can lead others to greatness is just plain wrong. Likewise, it is plain wrong to believe that leaders come only from large or great or small or new organizations, or from established economies or from start-up companies. The truth is, leadership is an identifiable set of skills and abilities that are available to anyone. It is because there are so many leaders—not so few—that extraordinary things get done on a regular basis in organizations, especially in times of great uncertainty.

There was another crucial truth that wove itself throughout every situation and every action we’ve analyzed. Personal-best leader- ship experiences are never stories about solo performances. Leaders never get extraordinary things accomplished all by themselves. Leaders mobilize others to want to struggle for shared aspirations, and this means that, fundamentally, leadership is a relationship. Lead- ership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. It’s the quality of this relationship that matters most when engaged in getting extraordinary things done. A leader- constituent relationship that’s characterized by fear and distrust will never produce anything of lasting value. A relationship characterized by mutual respect and confidence will overcome the greatest adversi- ties and leave a legacy of significance.12

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That is precisely what Yamin Durrani told us about his relation- ship with Bobby Matinpour, marketing manager at National Semi- conductor, who came aboard just after the company had gone through a massive reorganization followed by a huge layoff. Accord- ing to Yamin, “Company-wide there was a general lack of motiva- tion, a sense of mistrust, insecurity, and everyone was looking after their own interest. Our group in particular was suffering from low motivation as we didn’t trust each other. I dreaded going to the office, and there was too much internal competition leading to breakdowns in communication.”

Bobby realized that he was going to have to get people to trust one another. His very first initiative was to sit with individual team members to understand their desires, needs, and future plans. For the first month, he spent most of the time learning and trying to understand what each person aspired to and enjoyed doing. He held weekly one-on-one meetings with individual team members, asking questions and listening attentively to what they had to say. “His friendly style and honest, straightforward approach,” said Yamin, “led team members to open up and feel secure. He never acted as if he knew everything, and was open to learning new things from the team. Bobby understood that he couldn’t gain the respect of the team without respecting them and allowing them the freedom to take ownership of their projects. Bobby opened up lines of communica- tion within the team, especially by encouraging greater face-to-face interactions.”

In management meetings when a question was asked, even though he could have provided the answer himself, Bobby typically referred it to one of his team members, stating, for example, “Yamin is an expert on this topic; I will let him answer this question.” During the annual sales conference, attended by hundreds of company employees, he let the most junior team member deliver the group

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G E presentation, while the whole team stood behind the presenter to

answer questions. Yamin observed,

Being new to the group, Bobby could have easily fallen into the trap of trying to prove himself by individually contributing in projects, or acting as a gatekeeper for information flow; however, he opted to trust his team members on projects and took advice from them about the approach to take on a particular project. He never forced his ideas. In other words, “my way or the highway” was not his style. He encouraged team members to take initiative and acted as an adviser on projects, and let the ownership remain with the individual team member.

The results of Bobby’s leadership were significant. The unit’s revenue increased by 25 percent, and the product pipeline over- flowed with ideas. Team spirit soared, people felt engaged, and a general sense of collaboration and teamwork developed. Said Yamin, “I personally had not felt more empowered and trusted ever before. From this experience, I’ve realized that great leaders grow their fol- lowers into leaders themselves.”

In the way he focused on others and not on himself, Bobby demonstrated that success in leadership, success in work, and success in life are a function of how well people work and play together. Success in leading is wholly dependent on the capacity to build and sustain those relationships. Because leadership is a reciprocal process between leaders and their constituents, any discussion of leadership must attend to the dynamics of this relationship. Strategies, tactics, skills, and practices are empty without an understanding of the fundamental human aspirations that connect leaders and constitu- ents. What are the ingredients for building such relationships?

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What People Look For and Want from Their Leaders

To better understand leadership as a relationship, we investigated the expectations that constituents have of leaders. We asked people to tell us the personal traits, characteristics, and attributes they look for and admire in a person whom they would be willing to follow. The responses both affirm and enrich the picture that emerged from studies of personal leadership bests.

We began this research on what constituents expect of leaders more than thirty years ago by surveying thousands of business and government executives. Several hundred different values, traits, and characteristics were identified in response to the open-ended question about what they looked for in a person they would be willing to follow.13 Subsequent content analysis by several independent judges, followed by further empirical analyses, reduced these items to a list of twenty characteristics (each grouped with several synonyms for clarification and completeness).

From this list of twenty characteristics, we developed the Char- acteristics of Admired Leaders checklist. It has been administered to well over one hundred thousand people around the globe, and the results are continuously updated. This one-page survey asks respon- dents to select the seven qualities, out of twenty, that they “most look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow.” The key word in this statement is willingly. What do they expect from a leader they would follow, not because they have to, but because they want to?

The results have been striking in their regularity. Over the years, wherever this question is asked, it’s clear, as the data in Table 1.2 illustrate, that there are some essential “character tests” an individual must pass before others are willing to grant the designation leader.

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Percentage of Respondents Selecting Each Characteristic

Characteristic 1987 1995 2002 2007 2012

HONEST 83 88 88 89 89

FORWARD-

LOOKING

62 75 71 71 71

COMPETENT 67 63 66 68 69

INSPIRING 58 68 65 69 69

Intelligent 43 40 47 48 45

Broad-minded 37 40 40 35 38

Fair-minded 40 49 42 39 37

Dependable 33 32 33 34 35

Supportive 32 41 35 35 35

Straightforward 34 33 34 36 32

Cooperative 25 28 28 25 27

Determined 17 17 23 25 26

Courageous 27 29 20 25 22

Ambitious 21 13 17 16 21

Caring 26 23 20 22 21

Loyal 11 11 14 18 19

Imaginative 34 28 23 17 16

Mature 23 13 21 5 14

Self-Controlled 13 5 8 10 11

Independent 10 5 6 4 5

Note: These percentages represent respondents from six continents: Africa,

North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. The majority of

respondents are from the United States. Because we asked people to select

seven characteristics, the total adds up to more than 100 percent.

TABLE 1.2 Characteristics of Admired Leaders

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Although every characteristic receives some votes, meaning that each is important to some people, what is most evident and striking is that over time, four, and only four, have always received more than 60 percent of the votes (with the exception of Inspiring in 1987). And these same four have consistently been ranked at the top across different countries.14

What people most look for in a leader (a person whom they would be willing to follow) has been constant over time. And our research documents that this pattern does not vary across countries, cultures, ethnicities, organizational functions and hierarchies, genders, levels of education, and age groups. For people to follow someone willingly, the majority of constituents believe the leader must be

• Honest • Forward-looking • Competent • Inspiring

These investigations of desired leader attributes demonstrate consistent and clear relationships with what people say and write about their personal-best leadership experiences. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership and the behaviors of people whom others think of as exemplary leaders are complementary perspectives on the same subject. When they’re performing at their peak, leaders are doing more than just getting results. They’re also responding to the expectations of their constituents.15

As the themes of being honest, forward-looking, competent, and inspiring, are woven into the subsequent chapters on The Five Prac- tices, you’ll see in more detail how exemplary leaders respond to the expectations of their constituents. For example, leaders cannot

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G E Model the Way without being seen as honest. The leadership practice

Inspire a Shared Vision involves being forward-looking and inspir- ing. When leaders Challenge the Process, they also enhance the perception that they’re dynamic and competent. Trustworthiness, often a synonym for honesty, plays a major role in how leaders Enable Others to Act, as does the leader’s own competency. Likewise, leaders who recognize and celebrate significant accomplishments— who Encourage the Heart—show inspiration and positive energy, which increases their constituents’ understanding of the commit- ment to the vision and values. When leaders demonstrate capacity in all of The Five Practices, they show others they have the compe- tence to make extraordinary things happen.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: CREDIBILITY IS THE FOUNDATION

The top four characteristics—honest, forward-looking, competent, and inspiring—have remained constant in the ever-changing and turbulent social, political, and economic environment of the past thirty years. The relative importance of each has varied somewhat over time, but there has been no change in the fact that these are the four qualities people want most in their leaders. Whether they believe that their leaders are true to these values is another matter, but what they would like from them has remained the same.

These four consistent characteristics are descriptively useful in and of themselves—but there’s a more profound implication revealed by these data. Three of these four key characteristics make up what communications experts refer to as “source credibility.” In assessing the believability of sources of communication—whether news

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reporters, salespeople, physicians, or priests; whether business man- agers, military officers, politicians, or civic leaders—researchers typi- cally evaluate them on three criteria: their perceived trustworthiness, their expertise, and their dynamism. People who are rated more highly on these dimensions are considered by others to be more credible sources of information.16