I just read a great chapter on leadership in The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes & Posner. I thought I’d share some of my favorite bullet points:
1. Leaders Model the Way
- Leadership is not about personality; it’s about behavior.
- Leading means you have to be a good example, and live what you say.
- Leaders must find their own voice, then they must clearly and distinctively give voice to their values.
- Leadership is about the power of spending time with someone, of working side by side with colleagues, of telling stories that make values come alive, of being highly visible during times of uncertainty, and of asking questions to get people to think about values and priorities.
2. Leaders Inspire a Shared Vision
- Every organization, every social movement, begins with a dream.
- Leaders have a desire to make something happen, to change the way things are, to create something that no one else has ever created before.
- In some ways, leaders live their lives backward… it is their vision of the future pulls them forward.
- Leaders cannot command commitment, only inspire it.
- Leadership is a dialogue, not a monologue. Leaders must know their constituents and speak their language.
3. Leaders Challenge the Process
- Leaders venture out. They are pioneers. They are willing to step out into the unknown.
- Leaders search for opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve. They are constantly looking outside themselves and their organizations for new and innovative products, processes, and services.
- When it comes to innovation, the leader’s major contributions are in the creation of a climate for experimentation, the recognition of good ideas, the support of those ideas, and the willingness to challenge the system to get new products, processes, services, and systems adopted.
- Leaders are learners.
- Life is the leader’s laboratory, and exemplary leaders use it to conduct as many experiments as possible.
4. Leaders Enable Others to Act
- Grand dreams don’t become significant realities through the actions of a single person. It requires a team effort.
- Leaders foster collaboration and build trust.
- Leaders work to make people feel strong, capable, and committed.
- Authentic leadership is founded on trust, and the more people trust their leader, and each other, the more thy take risks, make changes, and keep organizations and movements alive.
5. Leaders Encourage the Heart
- It is part of the leaders job to show appreciation for people’s contributions and to create a culture of celebrating values and victories.
- Encouragement is, curiously, serious business.
- Leaders make sure people see the benefit of behavior that’s aligned with cherished values.
- Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. It is the quality of this relationship that matters most when we’re engaged in getting extraordinary things done.
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