Leadership, Who’s Business is it Anyway?

Leadership, Who’s Business is it Anyway?

I

n “The Leadership Challenge”,  Kouzes and Posner renowned

leadership experts and teachers, attempt to clarify in a

revolutionary way, a topic that has baffled man from time

immemorial – the topic of leadership. The intent of the book is

to describe the critical role of leadership in human

organizations. The practices and principles discussed in this

book are based on years of extensive research studies

conducted by the authors themselves. The book’s origins are in

a research project the authors began in 1983 with an objective

of understanding what people did when they were at their

“personal best” in leading others. The uniqueness of their

approach is that instead of interviewing star performers in

excellent companies to discover best practices, the authors decided to interview ordinary

people about their extraordinary experiences. This fits in nicely with the primary goal of

the book, which is to “strengthen the abilities and uplift the spirits” of the everyday

person faced with the daunting challenge of “leading” others, whether it be on the job, in

the community, or at home. The book isn’t about leaders themselves, but rather about

leadership; how ordinary people exercise it and in the process become effective leaders

who get extraordinary things done in their organizations.

The authors take over where most books leave off, considering two sides of the

leadership equation – the leaders and their constituents – arguing that one side cannot be

successful without the support of the other. The authors claim leadership to be a

reciprocal process between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow. In

fact, to stress the importance of this view, the authors devote an entire chapter describing

the dynamics of the relationship between “the two sides of the coin.” Among the

dynamics of this relationship is the expectation that the constituents have of their leader,

which the authors have effectively summarized at the beginning of the chapter with a

quote from Brian Carroll, “Without credibility, you can’t lead.”

The authors work hard to bust many of the prevailing myths of leadership, such as the

notion of the leader being a so called “Robin Hood,” magnetizing a band of followers

with courageous acts, or that of the leader being a prescient visionary with Merlin-like

powers, and perhaps the most pernicious myth of all, that leadership is reserved only for

the few “chosen ones.”

The authors take great care from the very beginning to make crystal clear their most

important conclusion that leadership is a set of observable, learnable practices, which can

be mastered by anyone with the desire to lead effectively. In my opinion though, the

book’s most valuable contribution is the distillation of their findings into a set of five

practices encompassing a total of ten commitments.

The book is very logically organized around these practices and commitments. Part one

of the book is a good “warm up” to prepare the reader for the meat of the text, the actual

practices and commitments themselves. Parts two through six of the book are devoted to

the set of five practices, dedicating one chapter for each of the ten commitments. It is this

organization of the book also makes it an excellent reference book. The book is

supplemented with a comprehensive appendix that explains and validates the theoretical

foundations of their Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI). This inventory is extremely

useful for identifying places of possible improvements for a leader within the context of

the five practices discussed in the book.

While most of the ideas and concepts presented by the authors are revealing and

supported by examples, these must be taken with a grain of salt, since most of the

discussions seem to be very “purist” in nature. Take, for example, the first practice of the

set of five practices – “Challenging the Process.” The essence of this practice is to

constantly question and possibly refine every activity within the organization, which by

itself is a noble thought. But where do you draw the line? What about that age-old adage,

“If it’s not broke, don’t try to fix it”? The authors do not lay down guidelines for the

novice leader to answer these questions. The authors suggest treating “every assignment

as a start-over, even if it isn’t.” This is probably not going to be feasible in a production

environment in which businesses capitalize on learning curve efficiencies. “Starting over

again” is, in essence, discarding these efficiencies. Maybe it’s not, but the authors do not

clarify this point. The authors encourage leaders to make mistakes and learn from them,

but they never clarify to the novice leader that that’s not all they should be doing. I

believe that there must be a balance between engaging in innovative and potentially risky

behavior and actually “getting the product out to the market”, but the authors do not

explicitly mention this.

This leads us to perhaps the most glaring shortcoming of the book: the lack of any

guidelines of how to gauge a particular situation and apply the proper mix of the five

practices to that situation. Does a commander leading a battalion through enemy territory,

in the midst of a war, apply the same mix of the five practices as a community leader

organizing a charity fundraiser with volunteer-only help? In my opinion, the book does

not answer this question. It is as important to know what behaviors to engage in, as it is to

know what behaviors not to engage in. A definition of diplomacy “Not the art of knowing

what to say but rather knowing what not to say” comes to mind here.

Regardless of whether one completely agrees with the philosophy of the authors’ “

Five

Practices And Ten Commitments of Leadership

” and the supporting examples, one is

compelled to concede that this remarkably rich and detailed, yet easy-to-read book,

provides nutritious “food for thought” and sharpens our understanding of a challenge that

most of us face today – the leadership challenge – and ultimately gives us the tools for

meeting this challenge head on. After all, as Kouzes and Posner would say, and I agree,

“Leadership is everyone’s business.”

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