Peruse a local bookstore’s business and leadership section and you are likely to be overwhelmed with the number of books calling for your attention. Cultivating one’s skills in leadership is a requirement for succeeding in an ever-changing world of technological advancement and business acumen. Where should one start?
You would do well to consider Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations – a lengthy book with a breezy reading style that serves as a one-stop shop for leadership principles.
The Leadership Challenge was first published in 1982, when the authors asked leaders this question:
“What did you do when you were at your personal best as a leader?” (2).
Now in its fifth edition, The Leadership Challenge features updated research from across the globe, but the five practices of exemplary leadership derived from the results of their survey are the same.
Leadership Practices and Commitments
Kouzes and Posner sum up their findings with the “five practices” (great leaders model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart). For each of these practices, they offer two ways of implementation, which they call the Ten Commitments of Leadership. The book is structured around the practices and their corresponding commitments, the “essential behaviors that leaders employ to make extraordinary things happen” (5).
This emphasis on behaviors runs throughout the book. Kouzes and Posner argue that “leadership is not about who you are; it’s about what you do” (15). Anyone can cultivate the skills necessary for leading well because the context may change, but the content of leadership stays the same. For the reader thrust into a leadership position who may wonder if he or she has innate leadership potential, the emphasis on implementing practices and improving skills will serve as a source of helpful encouragement to grow in one’s abilities.
The Leader’s Relationships
The Leadership Challenge certainly focuses on behaviors, principles, and practices, but this skill-centered approach to leadership does not minimize the importance of a leader’s authenticity and relational connection with his or her followers. In considering each of the five practices, Kouzes and Posner highlight the relational elements needed for implementation.
In order to model the way, for example, one must be able to align practices to values in a way that ignites the aspirations of the other team members. In order to share aspirations, one must know other people well enough to intuitively understand what will inspire and motivate them to action. In challenging the process, the only way to effectively lead people to willfully embrace temporary discomfort is through established credibility that can only exist when there is a relational history behind it.
The final two practices are most clearly relational – enlisting others and encouraging the heart. A vision can be implemented only when there are other capable people working alongside the leader, and a leader hold on to these capable people only when he or she happily recognizes their contributions publicly and privately. The Leadership Challenge focuses on the principles of leadership but without neglecting the people who make extraordinary things happen. This is one of the book’s strengths.
An Overview of Good Leadership
Another strength of this book is the way it sums up leadership principles in short, easily accessible chapters, whereas many of these principles could be extended into full-length books.
For example, the recent book Start with Why by Simon Sinek is about inspiring people to join a cause, not merely implement a plan. Sinek’s book is helpful in its focus on this principle, but the reader of The Leadership Challenge would already find this principle in a distilled form in the section on “inspiring a shared vision.” Likewise, the book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin argues that high performance is not a result of talent from birth but deliberate practice with specific feedback. The Leadership Challenge authors believe the same to be true regarding leadership, which is why they highlight skills to practice and commend feedback for the leader who is a continual learner.
Conclusion
Because of its accessibility and comprehensiveness, it is not surprising that The Leadership Challenge is now in its fifth edition. A reader looking for an introduction to leadership skills or for a refreshing reminder of the practices necessary for casting and sustaining a vision will find The Leadership Challenge to be a helpful guide.
