The Leadership Challenge Essay

Overview of Author’s Key Points Kouzes and Posner (2012) described the best practices of what makes an excellent leader and what inspires people to follow leaders and develop leadership skills within themselves. Based on research that has been regularly reinvestigated and updated, the authors determine five major practices that consistently emerged in their study of when leaders do their best. The best leaders “model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart” (Kouzes & Posner, 2012, p. 3).

From these practices the authors described ten commitments of leadership defined as “the essential behaviors that leaders employ to make extraordinary things happen” (Kouzes & Posner, 2012,

This practice involves experimenting and taking risks, knowing that failure is not an end but a way to learn how to move in new directions. The fourth practice involved enabling others to act through fostering collaboration, applying the golden rule to promote trust, and facilitating relationships designed to help everyone grow as they work toward common goals (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). This interaction strengthens people by boosting their self-determination; productivity improves when people develop competence and confidence in their skills and

First, I evaluated myself to determine what kind of a leader I am now. In order to model the way, I had to be able to articulate my leadership philosophy and how it applies in my classroom. Next, I wondered what makes me a good teacher; I considered how do I inspire students to want to learn and how do I motivate them to try when it gets hard. I also found that challenging the process is my greatest challenge because this practice involves confronting a system or group of people; confrontation in any form is one of my greatest challenges in motivating myself to get out of my comfort zone. I do not consider myself a ‘mover and shaker’. I tend to try to find where I can fit into a system and then contribute to that system using my own talents, skills, and knowledge. I feel confident in my ability to enable others to act because the process involves helping people feel empowered. A teacher develops that empowerment by informing, modeling, practicing, and revising knowledge and skills during the course of each lesson. Finally, encouraging others is certainly one of my personal spiritual gifts; I am an optimist at heart. The glass is half-full; the cloud has a silver lining. As a teacher, I spend a great deal of time urging, encouraging, and praising