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

by James M. Kouzes

When people see the successes and hear the positive feedback, it creates momentum.

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.

You can't command commitment; you have to inspire it. You have to enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations.

Leaders forge unity of purpose by showing their constituents how the dream is a shared dream and how it fulfills the common good.

Leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships. You have to engage all those who must make the project work—and in some way, all who must live with the results.

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

It's one thing to follow someone because you think you have to “or else,” and it's another when you follow a leader because you want to. What do people expect from an individual they would follow, not because they have to, but because they want to?