Background of Leaning Leadership Book
The purpose of Learning Leadership book is to answer a fundamental question: How do people learn leadership and how they can learn to become leaders? James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner have written this book as an exclusive guide for leaders to become the best leader by practicing the five fundamentals of becoming an exemplary leader. The book provides a framework to help people of all levels and backgrounds to develop their leadership style and become the best leaders they can be. Kouzes and Posner provide leaders a practical series of actions and some coaching tips for developing their leadership process and helping them to create a context to grow. The larger purpose of this book is to help leaders
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They won numerous awards, including the Critics’ Choice Award for their best-selling book The Leadership Challenge that is translated in more than twenty-one languages. Also, they are famous for being Management/Leadership Educators of the year by International Management Council, ranked in the top twenty on Leadership Excellence Magazine’s list. They also developed a questionnaire for assessing leadership behavior, which is one of the best leadership assessments in the world. They have used many research studies and academic papers from more than seventy countries with examples from leaders around the world to write The Five Practice of Exemplary Leadership framework (Kouzes & Posner, 2016, …show more content…
Part one is included the fundamentals and provides the context for people to know what they need to do to become better leaders. In part two, authors discuss the necessary elements of the first fundamental, Believe you can which is about how important it is for leaders to believe in their capacities and have a mindset that leadership can be learned. Chapter three is about second fundamentals, Aspire to excel, which talks about the importance of knowing what is important for leaders and who they are. Chapter four discusses the third fundamental, Challenge yourself which is about how the challenge is critical to learning. Chapter five expresses the fourth fundamental, Engage support, and it points out that leaders who achieve excellence get support along the way. The fifth fundamental, practice deliberately, is the focus of chapter six which it mentions that leaders need to spend time practicing the essential skills for becoming a great leader. In the last chapter, authors summarize the key messages of the book, and they offer leaders to have the commitment to learning (Kouzes & Posner, 2016,
The topic of leadership has been explored and written about by thousands of authors who are considerably more qualified than I am to write about the subject. However, I’ve always maintained that developing, evolving and articulating one’s own leadership philosophy is an essential part of a professional’s growth. Through academics and experience, I’ve concluded that leadership is a “soft” skill, more art than science, and that leadership principles can be universally applied. As a topic of discussion, leadership can be ambiguous and seldom does everyone agree on a single definition. Organizations and the people they consist of crave leadership, even if not overtly. Undeniably, strong leadership is essential to achieving
Leadership is a quality which cannot be acquired by any person from the other but it can be acquired by self-determination of a person. Leadership can best be called the personality of the very highest ability-whether in ruling, thinking, imagining, innovation, warring, or religious influencing. Leadership is practiced not so much in words a it is in attitude and in actions. Their actions leave a long lasting memory in the line of history and lead up to may events that occur today. To be a leader one will need many qualities. Leaders have a purpose and strategies to accomplish that purpose. They are driven and motivated. In the end they should be able to attain good results. These innate talents help to make up a leader that will succeed and be efficient in carrying out tasks. But, the purpose of this paper is determine what truly makes a leader successful. A successful leader should be considered more on their impact rather than their accomplishments of their organizations alone for they are not sufficient in determining the key to their success .
The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner (2007) is the result of twenty years of research on the factors that influence and create great leadership. Through studies and stories from leaders with various backgrounds throughout the world, the practices and characteristics that create great leadership are delineated. Leadership is viewed not as a group of inherent characteristics, but as learned behavior that anyone can achieve. The goal of Kouzes and Posner’s book is to inspire and educate leaders through transformational leadership. As such, leadership is about mobilizing others to become and do extraordinary things.
Leaders is an effective tool for summarizing and inspiring leadership, not in that it teaches tough strategies and manipulations, but that when looking at an overview of its content, Bennis and Nanus are essentially teaching human relations and human decency. All in all, this book highlights strategies for us all to be better in our lives and our everyday interactions.
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
A leader needs to “believe” in oneself and have the confidence that whatever you say will excite and what you do can motivate others. You must be optimistic about what you do, do have some relevance for being in existence. Believe it or not, “leadership begins with you”.
There are several ways to define leadership, but what sets effective leaders apart from commonplace managers are their extraordinary actions and the successes that result. In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner claim leaders that employ The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are much more effective than those who do not (2012, p. 25). This paper will be reviewing my assessment findings, exploring my strengths and weaknesses, examining my personal-best leadership story, and detailing a specific area of development.
Hall, Peter, & Norris, Peter. (1993). Learning for leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 14(7), 35. Retrieved August 25, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 81758).
The leadership is a result of a combination of traits, with special emphasis on the personal qualities of the leader, which he should possess certain personality traits that would be special facilitators in leadership performance. This theory shows that leaders are born as such, there is no likelihood of 'making' them later with personal development techniques.
When considering the term management, there has always been a common miss conception that this automatically makes an individual a leader. Leadership is only a single element of the management role. Many times managers are more comfortable utilizing a particular leadership style. While this may work well the majority of the time, certain employees or situations may require a different approach. Good leadership requires that the individual recognize the need for change to motivate their employees to accomplish the task at hand or to reach common goals. Understanding the importance of leadership is essential. However, the key element to focus on is what steps can be taken to improve one’s leadership capabilities. For many individuals this may be a difficult question to answer and may only be possible through self-assessment and reflection.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary
Leaders will no matter what have an influence on our world. They have missions, dreams and ambition, and with these things they are bound to go far. For leaders, what makes these dreams come true is having strong qualities such as leadership practices, values and strengths. If developed and learned how to use correctly, these are what take leaders to the next level and accomplish great things. In the following paper I will talk about leadership in our ever-changing world, explore my leadership practices, values and strengths as well as elaborate on the goals I have made to challenge myself as a leader.
Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
The leadership challenge is all about how leaders mobilize others to make great things happen in an organization (Kouzes &Posner, 2012). It is based off the leader’s practices and how they work together as a team to innovate, challenge and reward others in any given situation. It’s about getting others to follow the leader and tag along on the leadership journey. There are five practices that Kouzes and Posner discuss in the book and they are as follows: model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encouraging the heart. These five practices are what happens when leaders engage with their team and great things happen (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). A leader is known for what they do within an organization.
The essence of leadership is very simple. It is to help people to perform to their maximum potential to achieve organizational goals or objectives. “True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.” There are a variety of different leaders and leadership qualities that people possess that enable them to provide guidance, implement goals, and encourage people to complete a task. Leadership is an indispensable skill for everyone to learn because it involves the communication and relationship between higher authority figures and followers. Imagining a world with a lack of leadership, there would be no motivation for people to achieve goals and tasks. Leaders enable followers to realize their potential of developing leadership qualities through words and actions. The focus of leading a group or organization is to benefit the followers so that they can become leaders in the future. True leadership involves the development of communication and teamwork skills, working with followers that provide insight on improvements. Leadership embraces the form of different styles, the two major styles including authoritarian and democratic leadership styles. There are several different types of beneficial leadership styles that accommodate to the personality of a leader; however, the democratic leadership style creates more effectiveness and productivity than authoritarian leadership.