Being an effective leader is not a natural born ability that some people have and some don’t. Many people think that being able to lead requires a great deal of experience, and, while experience does help, it is not an essential prerequisite. Experience is only useful if you have learned from it, and how much you continue to learn from it as you progress.
After forty years of experience in the field, the authors offer us some important words of encouragement by telling us that the ability to lead is within us all. Anyone who doesn’t think that they have the capacity for leadership can in fact acquire it, and then strengthen it with practice. So, the real question we need to ask ourselves is “how can I become a better leader tomorrow than I am today?”
The effectiveness of leadership lies in our behaviour, and we must remember that training our skills will only be truly effective if we are genuinely motivated. At the heart of this motivation are our values, along with those of the other people in the organisation, which we must be aware of and take into account when making decisions.
Kouzes and Posner carried out a Leadership Practices Inventory, which has been completed by over 5 million people until now. From this questionnaire, the authors were able to outline 10 key behaviours of an exemplary leader, which they display in five core practices. These are: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.
The 10 behaviours analysed, one for each chapter of the book, essentially represent the commitments that a leader makes both to themself and to the people in their organisation, whether it is just one person or a hundred. This book is, therefore, a reference manual based on case studies and testimonies, and has been described as an indispensable resource for all leaders.
This book also teaches us that the only people who can in fact recognise their leader as an effective guide are their co-workers.
