Kouzes And Posner Leadership Quotes

In the end, leaders don't decide who leads. Followers do.

There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing.

Interestingly, one of the most important times to listen well is when you disagree with the message, especially as it relates to how we affect others.

Managers can threaten people with the loss of jobs if they don't get with the program, but threats, power, and position do not earn commitment. They earn compliance.

Anyone who’s ever been in a leadership role quickly learns that you’re squeezed between others’ lofty expectations and your own personal limitations. You realize that while others want you to be of impeccable character, you’re not always without fault. You learn that you can’t see around every corner, and even if you know your way forward everyone may not end up at the same destination, let alone be on time. You discover that despite your best efforts to introduce brilliant innovations, most of them don’t succeed. You find that you sometimes get angry and short, and that you don’t always listen carefully to what others have to say. You’re reminded that you don’t always treat everyone with dignity and respect. You recognize that others deserve more credit than they get, and that you’ve failed to say thank you. You know that sometimes you get, and accept, more credit than you deserve. In other words, you realize that you’re human.

Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, without having their hearts in it. The best-kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce, and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.

And even in this digital age, when face-to-face contact seems to be diminishing—and this change is the source of many of the leadership problems being experienced these days—it is the interaction between leaders and constituents that turns opportunities into successes. The key to unlocking greater leadership potential can be found when you seek to understand the desires and expectations of your constituents and when you act on them in ways that correspond to their image of what an exemplary leader is and does.

Listening is seen as one of the most important leadership skills.

Building character and culture is a function of aligning your beliefs and behaviors with principles that are external, objective, and self-evident. They operate regardless of your awareness of them. What principles guide an authentic leader? Authentic leaders are humble. They are unassuming in the way that they share the glory with their team members and are modest about their accomplishments. Their courage ensures that they have the integrity to make the right choices when necessary. Skills

Leaders must ask themselves, “What do I stand for? What are the principles that guide me in my day-to-day work and keep me here in this job, doing this work, and supporting these people?” Once affirmed, leaders must act out their values, demonstrating what they mean.

The Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership: If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message. Leaders

You must give people reasons to care, not simply orders to follow.

… the best leaders are simply the best learners.

Leadership is a dialogue, not a monologue.

Strategic thinkers see the future. Vision and a sense of the future are inherent parts of strategic thinking. Strategic thinkers are constantly reinventing the future – creating windows on the world of tomorrow. James Kouzes and Barry Posner in their book The Leadership Challenge indicated: “All enterprises or projects, big or small, begin in the mind’s eye; they begin with imagination and with the belief that what is merely an image can one day be made real.

And compliance produces adequacy—not greatness. Only credibility earns commitment.

Only credibility earns commitment.

People commit to causes, not to plans.