James Kouzes and Barry Posner
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2003
Table of Contents
If you have questions about leadership - in general or related to your situation - you may want to send them to James Kouzes at jim@kouzesposner.com or Barry Posner at bposner@scu.edu.
This book is for anyone who has a status position in a university. For anyone who is a rector or a vice-rector - a dean or a deputy-dean - a head of an academic or administrative department. It's also for two other groups of people. For those who aspire to have one of these status positions and for those who are looking for criteria they can use to do two things. To evaluate the performance of people in these positions or to elect people to these positions.
But, for those who have one of these status positions, there's a qualification attached. The book was written for those who wish to add value to the status they have. The value that comes from shifting the focus from what's being done to what could be done instead. The value that comes from having the courage to guide people within one's sphere of influence to places where you and they have never been before.
So, if you want to stop showing off in the shallow end of the pool, what must you do to prove yourself in the deep end?
Kouzes and Posner (K&P) have a three-dimensional answer. A slogan. A five-step guide to being an exemplary leader. And a set of suggestions to help you add value to the status position you have, or aspire to have.
The slogan is rooted in their research, as well as in the leadership literature. Leadership is a relationship. Either an effective relationship or an ineffective one. In either case, it's a relationship between those who have a leadership label and those who do or don't admire them.
Yes, it's as straightforward and as tough as that. Admirable leaders have credibility. And they are credible when they meet two conditions. They know what they stand for; know what they will and will not do. And they do what they say they will do. In K&P's summary: If people don't see consistency - if, for example, special favours seem to be shown, or staff are maligned, or colleagues are denigrated, or responsibilities are not accepted - they conclude that the leader is not serious or a hypocrite.
The five-step guide to being an exemplary leader are the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership that are rooted in K&P's research, teaching and consulting. These are the practices of Modelling the Way, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Challenging the Process, Enabling Others to Act and Encouraging the Heart.
The behaviours that constitute these practices are pretty intuitive:
- Modelling the Way includes establishing principles concerning the way people should be treated and goals should be pursued. It also includes creating standards of excellence and modelling what it means to strive to honour them.
- Inspiring a Shared Vision is about implementing a set of passionate beliefs about what the part of the university which one leads can become. For rectors and vice-rectors these beliefs refer to the whole institution. For deans and deputy-deans these beliefs refer to the faculty they lead. For heads of department they refer to the departments they chair.
- Challenging the Process is part of inspiring a shared vision. It involves looking for opportunities to change the status quo; looking for ways in which things can be done differently, or done more effectively and efficiently.
- Enabling Others to Act is necessary because the goals that leaders have to achieve can be achieved only by teams in which there is mutual respect and trust; by teams in which people are encouraged to use the skills and knowledge which they have.
- Encouraging the Heart is about failure and success. About learning from - and assisting others to learn from - the mistakes that are inevitable. But it's also about celebrating success and creating the new goals that success makes possible.
The research that enables K&P to cover these five practices with illuminating examples goes back to 1983! It's rooted in what followers told them they looked for in a leader. In other words, this stuff comes from the people in the trenches. It doesn't come from their commanders! And it isn't theoretical stuff. It's about the behaviours that do and don't match each practice. And so, if you haven't got a copy of the book, you can get into what it's about by asking yourself when someone is or isn't in line with each of these things; when, for example, someone's behaviour does or doesn't encourage the heart. Better, you can invite the people who report to you to give you their lists of behaviour that counts for or against each of these five things.
Finally, there's the last chapter of the book. The chapter which argues that leadership is everyone's business. Why? It's possible to acquire the behaviours that are in line with the five practices. More importantly, it's possible to stop behaving in ways that are out of line with them. For sure, being a leader, as well as learning to be a leader, involves making mistakes. So does driving a car and learning to drive a car.
So here's a final K&P punchline:
We're all born with various sets of skills and abilities. What we do with what we have before we die is up to us.
an uncomfortable postscript
Most of the people who hold faculty positions in a university - myself included - don't want to be leaders. We find teaching and research more interesting and more challenging. So it may seem that K&P's slogan, guides and suggestions aren't for us, except as criteria for deciding who to elect as rectors or vice-rectors, deans or deputy deans, or as the head of a department.
Not so, say K&P. There's a sting in the tail of their book. Research shows that what followers look for in a leader, students look for in a teacher or lecturer or dissertation supervisor!
They spell it out on pages 11 and 12:
Like an admirable leader, an admirable faculty member is honest, forward-looking, competent and inspiring. Who'd want to take a course from someone who wasn't competent or wasn't very excited about the subject matter? How about instructors who don't do what they say they will do? Students say that their best teachers are able to get them to see the "big picture"; to understand how what they are being taught would assist them in a workplace. And they are forward-looking, with a sense of how things in their field could change in the not too distant future.
So, yes, this book is about exemplary teaching as much as it's about exemplary leadership. And so those of us who aspire to be admirable teachers could turn K&P's Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership into Five Practices of Exemplary Teaching by asking ourselves what kind of lecture-room behaviour does and doesn't model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the heart. And, if we are genuinely committed to these five practices, we'll find ways in which students - perhaps after they've graduated - can tell us when we did and when we didn't do what we were trying to do.
All of which means that this book is for everyone in a university environment. For those who have leadership positions, as well as for those who have teaching positions. It's for anyone who wants to add value to the status they have by delivering what their followers or their students are looking for.
one more thing
If you haven't got the time to read these 104 pages, there's another way to go. Invest in the 16 page Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. When you have, first work through it on your own and then with the people you lead. It contains two case studies, short descriptions of each of the Five Practices, a section on learning to lead and background information on the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI).
If you have questions about leadership - in general or related to your situation - you may want to send them to James Kouzes at jim@kouzesposner.com or Barry Posner at bposner@scu.edu.
James Moulder (plato@sims.com.au) is a retired business school academic who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His hobbies are theology and poetry.
