The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations (J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner)

Strategies, tactics, skills, and practices are empty without understanding the fundamental human aspirations that connect leaders and constituents.

Leading others requires having high expectations about what people can accomplish and treating them in ways that bolster their self‐confidence, thereby making it possible for them to achieve more than they initially imagined.

High‐performing organizations are composed of people willing to work beyond their job descriptions, and this results from their having the latitude to make choices about the work they do and how they do it.

Studies of companies deemed “great workplaces” conclude that “ensuring that employees are given the training they need and involving them in decisions that impact their work creates both competence and commitment.”

High‐performance values stress the commitment to excellence, caring values communicate how others are to be treated, and uniqueness values tell people inside and outside how the organization is different from all the others.

The Kouzes‐Posner First Law of Leadership: If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message. Before people determine what they think about what you are saying, they decide what they think of you.

Too many people think that it's the leader's job to develop the vision when the reality is that people want to be involved in this process. You can't command commitment; you have to inspire it.

encourage team learning and relationship building, celebrations, ceremonies, and similar events offer leaders the perfect opportunity to explicitly communicate and reinforce the actions and behaviors that are important in realizing shared values and mutual goals.

THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE has always been about how people go about mobilizing others to want to make extraordinary things happen.

Articulate Your Leadership Philosophy To find your voice, you have to discover what you care about, what defines you, and what makes you who you are. You have to explore your inner self. You can only be authentic when you lead according to the principles that matter most to you.