The Leadership Challenge

James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, both leadership scholars and educators, have studied exemplary leadership for over four decades. Now in its seventh edition, their book presents a research-based framework called The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership, built on the premise that leadership is a learnable set of behaviors available to anyone regardless of title, position, or background.

The authors open by contextualizing this edition within the upheavals of the early 2020s: the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent social unrest, political instability in the United States, the war in Ukraine, climate anxiety, and the mass voluntary resignations known as the "Great Resignation." Despite these crises, people and organizations adapted, pivoting to remote work, accelerating vaccine development, and reimagining workplace culture. These responses reinforce the book's foundational proposition: Challenge is the crucible for leadership and the opportunity for greatness. In over 40 years of collecting Personal-Best Leadership Experiences, a research method in which people describe times they performed at their highest leadership standard, every case involved overcoming adversity.

The Five Practices emerged from qualitative analysis of thousands of personal-best cases beginning in 1983 and were subsequently validated through the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), a 360-degree assessment tool whose normative database includes over five million respondents from more than 120 countries. When leaders do their best, Kouzes and Posner argue, they engage in five core practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. Each practice contains two commitments, yielding the Ten Commitments of Exemplary Leadership that structure the book's central chapters.

The authors present extensive empirical evidence that these practices produce results. Analysis of nearly five million LPI respondents shows that leaders of the most engaged direct reports use The Five Practices over 50 percent more frequently than those experienced by the least engaged. Multivariate analyses demonstrate that demographic and organizational variables together explain less than three-tenths of one percent of variance in engagement, while leadership behaviors consistently account for 33 to 42 percent. Financial studies show that organizations whose senior leaders actively use The Five Practices had net income growth nearly 18 times higher and stock price growth nearly three times greater over five years compared to counterparts with less engaged leadership.

Before detailing each practice, the authors establish that leadership is fundamentally a relationship. Over 150,000 respondents to their Characteristics of Admired Leaders survey consistently select four top qualities: honest, competent, inspiring, and forward-looking. These findings have remained stable across gender, ethnicity, education, industry, and nationality for four decades, and they align with what communication researchers call "source credibility," the combination of trustworthiness, expertise, and dynamism. This leads the authors to formulate the Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership: "If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message" (24). Credibility, they argue, is the foundation of leadership.

The first practice, Model the Way, comprises two commitments: Clarify Values and Set the Example. Clarifying values means discovering one's own guiding principles and then facilitating dialogue to affirm shared values. Studies show that personal values clarity is the primary driver of commitment, regardless of whether people are clear about organizational values, and that leaders who are clear about their leadership philosophy rate their effectiveness more than 128 percent higher than those who are only occasionally clear. Shared values produce measurable benefits including stronger loyalty, ethical behavior, reduced stress, and significantly higher financial performance. Setting the example requires aligning daily actions with shared values through how leaders spend their time, what they pay attention to, the questions they ask, and their openness to feedback. Teaching others to model values involves confronting critical incidents, telling stories, and aligning organizational systems with shared standards.

The second practice, Inspire a Shared Vision, encompasses Envision the Future and Enlist Others. Envisioning the future requires leaders to imagine exciting possibilities by reflecting on their past, attending to the present, prospecting the future, and expressing passion. The authors use a fog-driving analogy to argue that clear vision matters more during uncertainty: People go faster when they can see the road ahead. Identifying a common purpose means listening deeply to constituents' aspirations rather than imposing a top-down vision. Enlisting others requires appealing to common ideals and animating the vision through symbolic language, metaphors, and vivid imagery. The authors analyze Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech as a model of inclusive, emotionally resonant communication. Research shows that image-based words in vision communications trigger higher team performance and that positive communication broadens people's ideas about future possibilities.

The third practice, Challenge the Process, includes Search for Opportunities and Experiment and Take Risks. Searching for opportunities means seizing initiative and exercising what the authors call "outsight," or awareness of external forces. A global study of CEOs found that the most significant sources of innovative ideas come from outside the organization. Experimenting and taking risks requires generating small wins, which the authors define as concrete, completed outcomes of moderate importance that build momentum by making large challenges feel doable. Learning from experience is indispensable: The most effective leaders ask what can be learned when things go wrong rather than assigning blame. Creating a climate for learning requires psychological safety, where people feel free to speak up and make mistakes without fear of punishment, and a growth mindset, the belief that basic qualities can be cultivated through effort.

The fourth practice, Enable Others to Act, includes Foster Collaboration and Strengthen Others. Fostering collaboration begins with building trust, which the authors call the central issue in human relationships. Leaders must go first in extending trust through self-disclosure, vulnerability, and willingness to relinquish control. Facilitating relationships requires developing cooperative goals so people understand their interdependence and structuring projects to reward joint effort. Strengthening others means enhancing self-determination by providing choices, structuring jobs to offer latitude, and fostering accountability. It also means developing competence and confidence through training, coaching, and mentoring. Data reveals that 77 percent of direct reports feel proud of their organization when leaders frequently give freedom and choice, versus one percent when leaders almost never do.

The fifth practice, Encourage the Heart, comprises Recognize Contributions and Celebrate the Values and Victories. Recognizing contributions requires expecting the best from people, a dynamic the authors connect to the Pygmalion Effect, the tendency for people to perform in accordance with others' expectations. Personalizing recognition to individual preferences is essential. Research shows that personal congratulations rank at the top of nonfinancial motivators, and that expressing gratitude benefits the giver as well. Celebrating the values and victories means creating a spirit of community through public events that reinforce shared values, highlight role models, and generate what researchers call "emotional contagion." Being personally involved is critical: Direct reports whose leaders regularly participate in recognition and celebrations report the highest levels of organizational commitment.

The book closes by reaffirming that exemplary leadership is within everyone's capacity. The authors present evidence that 99.967 percent of LPI respondents engage in leadership behaviors more than "almost never," and that the most important leadership role models are local: family members (51 percent), immediate supervisors (16 percent), teachers and coaches (10 percent), and colleagues (7 percent). They counsel humility, self-compassion, and a growth mindset, urging readers to make leadership development a daily habit. The book ends with a story about U.S. Army Major General John H. Stanford, who, when asked about the secret to developing leaders, replied: "The secret to success is to stay in love" (323). Kouzes and Posner conclude: "Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart" (324).