The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations

by James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner

Overview

The most trusted source of leadership wisdom, updated to address today's realities

The Leadership Challenge is the gold-standard manual for effective leadership, grounded in research and written by the premier authorities in the field. With deep insight into the complex interpersonal dynamics of the workplace, this book positions leadership both as a skill to be learned, and as a relationship that must be nurtured to reach its full potential. This new seventh edition has been revised to address current challenges, and includes more international examples and a laser focus on business issues; you'll learn how extraordinary leaders accomplish extraordinary things, and how to develop your leadership skills and style to deliver quality results every time. Engaging stories delve into the fundamental roles that great leaders fulfill, and simple frameworks provide a primer for those who seek continuous improvement; by internalizing key insights and putting concepts into action, you'll become a more effective, more impactful leader.

A good leader gets things done; a great leader aspires, inspires, and achieves more. This book highlights the differences between good and great, and shows you how to bridge the chasm between getting things done and making things happen.

• Gain deep insight into leadership's critical role in organizational health
• Navigate the shift toward team-oriented work relationships
• Motivate and inspire to break through the pervasive new cynicism
• Leverage the electronic global village to deliver better results

Business is evolving at an increasingly rapid rate, and leaders must keep pace with the changes or risk stagnation. People work differently, are motivated differently, and have different expectations today—business as usual is quickly losing its effectiveness. The Leadership Challenge helps you stay current, relevant, and effective in the modern workplace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781119736127
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	01/05/2023
Series:	J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner
Edition description:	7th ed.
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	43,391
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

James M. Kouzes is chairman of the Tom Peters Group/Learning Systems, which makes leadership work through practical, performance-oriented learning programs, including the Leadership Challenge Workshop and Leadership Is Everyone's Business. In 1993 the Wall Street Journal cited him as one of the twelve most requested "nonuniversity executive-education providers" to U.S. companies.

Barry Z. Posner, Ph.D, is dean of the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, and professor of organizational behavior. He has received several outstanding teaching and leadership awards, has published more than eighty research and practitioner-oriented articles, and currently is on the editorial review boards for the Journal of Management Education, the Journal of Management Inquiry, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He also serves on the board of directors for Public Allies-Silicon Valley and for the Center for Excellence in Nonprofits.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 8: Sharing Power And Information

Share information so your employees can see how to help- and they'll improve the business.

-ANTONIO ZARATE
Coordinator of the Guiding Team
Metalsa

If citizens are to take responsibility for governing, says Sunne McPeak, they must first be empowered. As president and CEO of the Bay Area Economic Forum and a former member of the Contra Costa County (California) Board of Supervisors, McPeak takes great pride in the large number of her constituents who continue their participation in local government activities long after their direct involvement with her. McPeak knows that when coalitions of highly diverse interests (such as growers and environmentalists in the Coalition to Stop the Peripheral Canal, which she co-chaired) come together, it's impossible for them to reach consensus and forge commitment unless they're provided with the skills and knowledge needed to make good judgments. For McPeak, keeping people informed, developing personal relationships among the participants, involving people in important decisions, and acknowledging and giving credit for people's contributions are essential to any process for reinventing government.

We find that, like McPeak, exemplary leaders make other people feel strong. They enable others to take ownership of and responsibility for their group's success. Long before empowerment was written into the popular vocabulary, credible leaders knew that only when their constituents felt strong, capable, and efficacious could they ever hope to get extraordinary things done. Constituents who feel weak, incompetent, and insignificant consistently underperform, they want to flee the organization, and they're ripe for disenchantment, even revolution.

People who feel powerless, be they managers or individual contributors, tend to hoard whatever shreds of power they have. Powerless managers, for example, tend to adopt petty and dictatorial styles. Powerlessness creates organizational systems in which political skills are essential and "covering yourself " and "passing the buck" are the preferred modes of handling interdepartmental differences.

When constituents have very little power, those in positions of authority can easily get people to follow orders. Under such circumstances, authority figures often attribute other people's behavior, no matter how good it is, to their own orders rather than to constituents' abilities and motivations. Stanford University researcher Jeffrey Pfeffer has found that "if behavior occurs in the presence of a great deal of external pressureeither positive in the form of monetary inducements or negative in the form of threats and sanctions-people are likely to conclude that the external forces both caused the behavior and were, in fact, necessary to produce it."

The most insidious thing about external control is that it actually erodes the intrinsic motivation that a person might have for a task. In other words, even the constituents begin to assume that only outside forces will compel them to do anything. And yet intrinsic motivation is esential to getting extraordinary things done. When people do things because they're told to, not because they want to, they don't perform at their best. Thus reliance on external power and control-whether by the authorities or the members-over time diminishes the capacity of individuals and organizations to excel.

This phenomenon was cleverly documented in one experiment involving small workgroups. Employees in some workgroups were allowed to influence decisions about their work (were made powerful, in other words), while those in other workgroups were not (were made powerless). The managers of the powerless groups routinely complained that their employees weren't motivated to work hard. These managers saw their workers as unsuitable for promotion and downplayed their skills and talents, and they evaluated the work output of their employees less favorably than did the managers of powerful workgroups. In fact, the actual output of both groups was roughly equivalent; it was the lack of employee opportunity to exercise influence that caused the managers to see their groups as poor performers.

The opportunity to create a climate where people are involved and important is at the heart of strengthening others. To create this climate, leaders use power in service of others, not in service of their own private interests.

Power in Service of Others

To get a better sense of how it feels to be powerless as well as enabled, try this exercise to clarify your own experiences: Take out a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. Label the left-hand column "Powerless Times" and the right-hand column "Powerful Times." Now think about work- related times when you felt powerless-weak, insignificant, like a pawn in someone else's chess game. Record the actions or situational conditions that contributed to your feelings of powerlessness. Once you've recorded a few examples of powerless times, turn your attention to those times you felt powerful-strong, efficacious, like the creator of your own experience.

Record the actions or conditions that contributed to your feelings of powerfulness.

Representative statements that we've received in response to this task in our workshops are shown in the list that follows. See how these compare to your own experiences:

Powerless Times     Powerful Times

• I had no input into a hiring decision of someone who was to report directly to me. I didn't even get to speak to the candidate.
• I was able to make a large financial decision on my, own. I got to write a check for $200,000 without being questioned.
• I was asked to take on a project for which I didn't have the experience. I was told, "I know you'll be successful."
• People picked me apart while I was making a presentation, and the champion of the project didn't support me.
• I was told I couldn't ask questions because I lacked the appropriate educational level.
• After having received a memo that said, "Cut travel," I made my case about why it was necessary to travel for business reasons; and I was told to go ahead.
• They treated us like mushrooms. They fed us and kept us in the dark.
• I interviewed job candidates and then got no feedback on the results.
• I was five years old, and my dad said, "You'll make a great mechanic one day" He planted the seed. Now I'm an engineer.
• I worked extremely hard-long hours and late nights-on an urgent project, and then my manager took full credit for it.
• I wanted to put a new program into effect, but we'd reached the
• My suggestions, whether good or bad, were either not solicited or-worse-ignored.
• The project was reassigned without my knowledge or input.
• I couldn't get answers to my questions.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 When Leaders Are at Their Best

Chapter 2 Clarify Values

Chapter 3 Set the Example

Chapter 4 Envision the Future

Chapter 5 Enlist Others

Chapter 6 Search for Opportunities

Chapter 7 Experiment and Take Risks

Chapter 8 Foster Collaboration

Chapter 9 Strengthen Others

Chapter 10 Recognize Contributions

Chapter 11 Celebrate the Values and Victories

Chapter 12 Treat Challenge as an Opportunity

Endnotes

About the Authors

Index

Interviews

Challenge Is the Opportunity for Greatness

Take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Think of a few well-known historical figures you consider exemplary leaders. Think about the men and women who you believe have led organizations, communities, states, nations, or the world to greatness. Write their names in the left-hand column. In the right-hand column opposite each name, record the events, circumstances, or historical contexts with which you identify each of these individuals.

Now review the list. Cover the names, and look only at the right-hand column listing the events, circumstances, or contexts. Is there any pattern in these leadership situations? What do they have in common?

We predict that your list will consist of leaders you identify with the creation of new institutions, the resolution of serious crises, the winning of wars, the organization of revolutionary movements, protests for improving social conditions, political change, innovation, or some other social transformation.

The following are a few examples of the historical leaders people have mentioned when we've asked this question. See if you don't agree with the observation.

Historical Leaders: Situation or Context

1. Susan B. Anthony -- Women's rights
2. Mahatma Gandhi -- National independence
3. Abraham Lincoln -- Civil War
4. Florence Kelly -- Fought for child labor laws
5. Martin Luther King Jr. -- Civil rights
6. Nelson Mandela -- National liberation movement
7. Rosa Parks -- Civil rights
8. Mother Teresa -- Served the poorest of the poor

Consistently over time, we've found that when we ask people to think of exemplary leaders, they recall individuals who served during times of turbulence, conflict, innovation, and change. They think of people who triumphed against overwhelming odds, who took the initiative when there was inertia, who confronted the established order, who rose to the challenge of adversity, who mobilized people and institutions in the face of strong resistance. They think of people who generated momentum in society and then guided that energy toward a more fulfilling future.

When times are stable and secure, we’re not severely tested. We may perform well, we may get promoted, we may even achieve fame and fortune. But certainty and routine breed complacency. In times of calm, we don’t take the opportunity to burrow inside and discover the true gifts buried down deep. In contrast, personal, business, and social hardships have a way of making us come face-to-face with who we really are and what we’re capable of becoming. Only challenge produces the opportunity for greatness. And given the daunting challenges we face today, the potential for greatness is monumental.

You may also notice something else about this list. The leaders we admire are also the ones who have the courage of their convictions. Not only do they have a clear set of principles and a vision which guides them, they also stand up for those beliefs during times of intense challenge and radical change. Of course, that's one of the reasons we admire them, but it's also a highly significant leadership lesson. It's only when are beliefs are tested in the trials of adversity that we know whether a leader has the "right stuff."

Skeptics might say that this is true only for those few great leaders who've made their mark on history, and it can't be true for those less famous. Absolutely not so. When my coauthor, Barry Posner, and I analyzed the initial set of personal-best cases in our leadership research, we discovered exactly the same thing. The challenges faced by the leaders we studied may have been less grand, but even so the situations they chose to discuss were about major change that had a significant impact on their organizations. This remains true today: regardless of function, field, economic sector, organizational level, or national boundary, the leaders in our study talk about times when they lead adventures into new territory. They tell us how they turned around losing operations, started up new plants, installed untested procedures, or greatly improved the results of poorly performing units. And these weren’t 10, 25, or even 50 percent improvements in products and processes; in many cases, the magnitude of changes was in the hundreds of percent. The personal-best leadership cases were about firsts, about radical departures from the past, about doing things that had never been done before, about going to places not yet discovered.

What’s significant about the emphasis on innovation in our leadership cases is that we don’t ask people to tell us about change; we ask them to tell us about personal-best leadership experiences. They can discuss any leadership experience they choose: past or present, unofficial or official; in any functional area; in any community, voluntary, religious, health care, educational, public-sector, or private-sector organization. Our respondents elected to talk about times of change, not time of stability and the status quo. Their stories underscore the fact that leadership demands changing the business-as-usual environment.

Whether we're reflecting on historical leaders or reviewing personal best leadership experiences, the study of leadership is the study of how men and women guide us through adversity, uncertainty, hardship, disruption, transformation, transition, recovery, new beginnings, and other significant challenges. It's also the study of how men and women, in times of constancy and complacency, actively seek to disturb the status quo and awaken to new possibilities.

In recent years the phrase "change leadership" has been popping up more and more frequently, perhaps in recognition of the role leaders play in turbulent times. While we understand the currency of the phrase, we think "change leadership" is redundant. Based on our evidence, change is what leadership is all about. What else would you call it -- "keep-things-the-same leadership"? There's just leadership, and then there's something else.

You need only look in the dictionary to understand the meaning. The word lead, at its root, means “go, travel, guide.” Leadership has about it a kinesthetic feel, a real sense of movement. Leadership is about going places, about travel and adventure, about stepping out into unknown territory. Leaders are pioneers. They begin the quest for a new order. They venture into unexplored territory and guide us to new and unfamiliar destinations. Leaders “go first.” They actively search for opportunities to change, grow, innovate, and improve.

Stuff happens in organizations and in our lives. Sometimes we choose it; sometimes it chooses us. It's unavoidable. People who become leaders don’t always seek the challenges they face. Challenges also seek leaders. Opportunities to challenge the process and introduce change open the door to doing one’s best. Challenge is the motivating environment for excellence. Challenging opportunities often bring forth skills and abilities that people don’t know they have. Given opportunity and support, ordinary men and women can get extraordinary things done in organizations. It's not so important whether you find the challenges or they find you. What is important are the choices you make when stuff happens. The question is, When opportunity knocks are you prepared to answer the door? James M. Kouzes

Editorial Reviews

This book is one of the very best on the topic of leadership, offering extraordinary stories from leaders at various ages and stages of their lives. Whether you're now in a leadership role and want to further strengthen and hone your skills, or you simply have the desire to learn to make a difference and help guide your company—or even friends and family members—to higher levels of success, you'll benefit by reading The Leadership Challenge. (president & CEO, The Charles Schwab Corporation)

David S. Pottruck

The first edition was seminal and totally original. It became a modern classic on leadership practically overnight. With this new edition, with new cases and concepts and action steps that are even riper and more important, Kouzes and Posner go way beyond their earlier work and have made yet another brilliant contribution to leadership studies. This new book, a product of an unusual collaboration, is essential reading for everyone involved or concerned with leading. (distinguished Professor of Business Administration, University of Southern California, and coauthor, "Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders")

Warren Bennis

From the ten commitments of leadership to the emphasis on actions and relationships, this valuable book is full of enduring wisdom and practical insights essential for success in challenging times. (Harvard Business School, best-selling author of "Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow")

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

An inspirational and practical handbook, this expanded revision of a bestselling manual originally published in 1987 offers sound advice to corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, to managers and employees and to aspiring leaders in retail, manufacturing, government, community, church and school settings. Drawing on interviews and a questionnaire survey of more than 3000 leaders, the authors identify five fundamental practices of exemplary leadership: challenge the status quo; inspire a shared vision; enable others to act; model the way forward by setting an example; tap individuals' inner drives by linking rewards and performance. Kouzes, chairman and CEO of TPG/Learning Systems, and Posner, managing partner of Santa Clara University's Executive Development Center in California, write insightful, down-to-earth, jargon-free prose. This new edition has been substantially updated to reflect the challenges of shrinking work forces, rising cynicism and expanded telecommunications. An appendix includes the author's Leadership Practices Inventory, a tool for assessing leadership behavior. 75,000 first printing; Executive Program Book Club main selection; author tour. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Kouzes gives workshops in executive development and managing growth companies; Posner conducts seminars in communication, group dynamics, etc. Their excellent book on leadership for business executives covers identifying and developing leadership qualities, building commitment into action, and other important topics. In addition to discussing the theoretical foundations of leadership, the authors use many examples from work situations to demonstrate application. In a field in which many books are available, this one is readable, interesting, and up-to-date. Highly recommended for collections serving business executives and students. Grace Klinefelter, Ft. Lauderdale Coll. Lib., Fla.

Library Journal

"For anyone who wants to improve their leadership, The Leadership Challenge is the perfect book for you." (The Association of MBA's, June 2017)

"... this book is a well written piece of art, which gives the reader practical skills and tips on how to start and maintain conversations in any situation." (Nursing Times, April 2018)

From the Publisher