Kouzes and Posner on leadership

James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s Leadership Challenge is outdated, having originated in the early 1980s when everyone was trashing management. Hence, Tom Peters said in the preface to his first edition in 1987 that “…management as we know it is not dead. But that’s the way it should be!” There is no mention of management in his book. The result is an overloaded concept of leadership. One problem with this account is that it makes it hard to see how lower-level employees can lead. Greater specialization, driven due to increasing complexity, it requires both functions, not just one.

Kouzes and Posner focus on executives, not leaders

Kouzes and Posner’s rationales can be questioned if leadership is viewed as an occasional act rather than an executive position.

“Leadership is a journey, but a journey has two parts: convincing people to join and taking them to the destination. Only the first stage is leadership. The second stage is a management task. Leaders sell the tickets to the journey—managers drive the bus to the destination This is true even if more leadership injections are needed to resell the merits of the journey.

” Credibility is the foundation of leadership: but we buy the ideas of eccentrics who we would not trust to manage anything. Great content can influence us even when the promoter (leader) is not personally credible. Character is only required for people in executive positions.

“Leadership is a relationship: Managers work closely with people to get things done. Because they have power over people, there needs to be a relationship of trust between them. It is possible to lead from a distance, so no employment relationships required When Martin Luther King led the US Supreme Court to ban segregation on buses, he may not have known the people in this organization or had any relationship with them.

“To lead, you must first look within yourself and clarify your values. This is only true for leading within the domain of values, if you want people to behave according to accepted values. But if you are promoting a new piece software for your “Bosses, your personal values ​​are not involved. The examples cited by Kouzes and Posner involve major cultural changes, challenges to values. Perhaps we should call this leadership values. Managers need to be clear about their values, though, because we can’t trust them with so much power over us unless we know where they stand on what’s important to us.

“It must be inspiring to lead: The truth is that the leadership style is situational. In scientific and technical organizations, there is a demand for “evidence-based” decision making. Here, leaders must cite hard facts to lead and it is It’s possible that they will — so either quietly or aggressively, as long as they have the evidence.

Kouzes and Posner describe 5 basic practices, but they are a mix of manager and leader actions.

model the way

Kouzes and Posner tell us that “leaders’ actions are far more important than their words…Exemplary leaders come first.” They first set an example through daily actions that demonstrate that they are deeply committed to their beliefs.” This is all very well if you are advocating a change in values, such as how employees or customers should be treated. But what if you work at Boeing and advocate for a new form of supersonic airliner? How do you model that? It is clear that one can lead by example, but modeling the way cannot be the cornerstone of all leadership, unless it is assumed that it is always based on human values. This may be important for political leaders or senior executives, but it may not be a requirement for all leaders.

Inspire a shared vision

If you see leadership as a journey, the vision is simply the destination you want others to join you in your quest for. Kouzes and Posner are right that leaders cannot expect to be followed if they have no idea where they want to go. But advocating a change to an existing product, an instance of thought leadership, is not visionary. We reserve the word vision for ideas at the higher end of the scale. Having a better idea only counts as a vision if it’s long term and paints a picture of a pretty grand future. New ideas can range along a continuum from the mundane to the revolutionary, radical, and visionary.

challenge the process

For Kouzes and Posner, being a leader means initiating “a change from the status quo.” But unfortunately they are wrong in this principle, because it is the main one of their five that characterizes leadership. They begin by telling us that leaders “seek opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve.” They quickly water down this point by saying “But leaders are not the only creators or originators of new products, services or processes.” .” Notice the phrase “they’re not the only ones.” This implies that Kouzes and Posner see leaders as occupying managerial roles. But if all leadership is an informal act, not a position, then advocating for a new product is always Kouzes and Posner acknowledge that new ideas come from “people on the front lines,” but for them “the leader’s main contribution lies in the recognition of good ideas, the support of those ideas, and the willingness to challenge the system to get new products… adopted.” This is a pretty poor version of “challenging the process.” The reason for the misconception is simply that there is no place in Kouzes and Posner’s world for management. they challenge the status quo, leaving it to managers to support, develop, and facilitate those who do.

Allow others to act and encourage the heart

There is not much difference between the fourth and fifth principles of Kouzes and Posner. Both relate to making it easier for teams of people to get to their destination, empowering and motivating them to put forth the necessary effort. These two principles are the most clearly relevant to the implementation phase of the journey and are the easiest to classify as managerial.

The bottom line is that The Leadership Challenge is a widely read book that certainly inspires executives to improve their performance, but as a description of leadership it is seriously out of date. There are two main problems with it. They do not give rise to management and cannot account for acts of leadership outside of the formal (or even informal) role of managing a team of people.