The Leadership Challenge Notes “Leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers. A more complete picture of leadership develops when you understand what people look for in someone they would willingly follow” (Kouzes and Posner 2017, p. xiii). PART 1. WHAT LEADERS DO AND WHAT CONSTITUENTS EXPECT Chapter 1. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. Using the stories of two people who each took advantage of an opportunity to lead their organization to excellence, the authors introduce their leadership model, The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. The Five Practices Ordinary people who guide others along pioneering journeys follow similar paths, marked by common patterns of action. When getting extraordinary things done in organizations, leaders engage in Five Practices that are available to anyone who accepts the leadership challenge: Model the Way Inspire a Shared Vision Challenge the Practice Enable Others to Act Encourage the Heart This model has stood the test of time—research confirms that it’s just as relevant now as when Kouzes and Posner first began their investigation. Leadership is a Relationship Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. Success in leadership, business and life is a function of how well people work and play together, and success in leading depends on the capacity to build and sustain the human relationships that enable people to extraordinary things done Ten Commitments of Leadership The behaviors that serve as the basis for learning to lead are embedded in The Five Practices: Model the Way Find your voice by clarifying your personal values Set the example by aligning actions with shared values Inspire a Shared Vision Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations. Challenge the Process Search for opportunities by seeking innovative ways to change, grow, and improve. Experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from mistakes. Enable Others to Act Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust. Strengthen others by sharing power and discretion. Encourage the Heart Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence. Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community. Chapter 2. Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership The authors discuss the research into the four qualities that people believe are essential to exemplary leadership, on which all great leadership is built. What People Look for and Admire in Their Leaders Over a period of more than 20 years, the authors asked more than 75,000 people around the globe what values they most looked for and admired in a leader, someone “whose direction they would willingly follow.” Only four out of 20 qualities have continuously receiv.

1. The Leadership Challenge Notes
“Leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers. A
more complete picture of leadership develops when you
understand what people look for in someone they would
willingly follow” (Kouzes and Posner 2017, p. xiii).
PART 1. WHAT LEADERS DO AND WHAT CONSTITUENTS
EXPECT
Chapter 1. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership.
Using the stories of two people who each took advantage of an
opportunity to lead their organization to excellence, the authors
introduce their leadership model, The Five Practices of
Exemplary Leadership.
The Five Practices
Ordinary people who guide others along pioneering journeys
follow similar paths, marked by common patterns of action.
When getting extraordinary things done in organizations,
leaders engage in Five Practices that are available to anyone
who accepts the leadership challenge:
Model the Way
Inspire a Shared Vision
Challenge the Practice
Enable Others to Act
Encourage the Heart
This model has stood the test of time—research confirms that
it’s just as relevant now as when Kouzes and Posner first began
their investigation.
Leadership is a Relationship

2. Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead
and those who choose to follow. Success in leadership, business
and life is a function of how well people work and play
together, and success in leading depends on the capacity to
build and sustain the human relationships that enable people to
extraordinary things done
Ten Commitments of Leadership
The behaviors that serve as the basis for learning to lead are
embedded in The Five Practices:
Model the Way
Find your voice by clarifying your personal values
Set the example by aligning actions with shared values
Inspire a Shared Vision
Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling
possibilities.
Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared
aspirations.
Challenge the Process
Search for opportunities by seeking innovative ways to
change, grow, and improve.
Experiment and take risks by constantly generating small
wins and learning from mistakes.
Enable Others to Act
Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and
building trust.
Strengthen others by sharing power and discretion.

3. Encourage the Heart
Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for
individual excellence.
Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of
community.
Chapter 2. Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership
The authors discuss the research into the four qualities that
people believe are essential to exemplary leadership, on which
all great leadership is built.
What People Look for and Admire in Their Leaders
Over a period of more than 20 years, the authors asked more
than 75,000 people around the globe what values they most
looked for and admired in a leader, someone “whose direction
they would willingly follow.”
Only four out of 20 qualities have continuously received more
than 50 per cent of the respondents’ votes: the majority of
people believe a leader must be honest, forward-looking,
competent, and inspiring.
Honesty is the single most important leadership characteristic
for nearly 90 percent of constituents. People expect leaders to
be truthful and ethical, be consistent between word and deed,
and take a stand on important principles.
The ability to look ahead is one of the most important
characteristics for more than 70 per cent of constituents. Being
forward-looking is more important to senior people in an
organization than to those on the front line, but no matter what

4. their positions, people expect leaders to be able to envision the
future—to have a sense of direction and a concern for the future
of the organization.
According to more than two-thirds of all constituents, leaders
must be able to inspire others, to communicate their vision and
encourage others to sign on. When leaders breathe life into their
constituents’ dreams and aspirations, they’re more willing to
work towards that future. Leaders must lift constituents’ spirits
and give them hope if constituents are to engage voluntarily in
challenging pursuits.
Finally, three in five people believe that leaders need to be
competent. They must demonstrate the ability to get things
done and to guide the organization in the right direction. The
areas in which they need to be competent depend on the nature
of their leadership role and the needs of their organization. All
leaders must have a good understanding of their business, even
if they are not technically proficient. The most important
competency is the ability to work well with others.
Credibility is the Foundation
What do these four attributes of leaders add up to? More than
anything else, they indicate that people want leaders who are
credible. People must be able to believe that their leaders’ word
can be trusted, they’ll do what they say, that they’re personally
excited and enthusiastic about the future, and that they have the
knowledge and skill to lead. Thus, the First Law of Leadership,
according to Kouzes and Posner, is: If you don’t believe in the
messenger, you won’t believe the message.
The authors found that people’s perceptions of their managers’
credibility affect their loyalty, commitment, energy, and
productivity. Credibility also influences customer and investor
loyalty, and employee, customer, and investor loyalty affects a
company’s success.

5. The dilemma is that leaders who are forward-looking are biased
about the future—they take a position on issues and have a clear
point of view and a partisan sense of where the organization
should be headed. By the nature of the role they play, such
leaders always have their credibility questioned by their
opponents, and they need to balance their personal desires to
achieve important ends with constituents’ need to believe that
leaders have others’ best interests at heart.
Leaders’ ability to take strong stands depends on their ability to
guard their credibility—to believe in the exciting future
possibilities leaders present, constituents must believe in their
trustworthiness, expertise, and dynamism.
When times are good, people have more confidence in their
leaders; when they are bad, people tend to be more cynical and
less likely to consider their leaders credible. Credibility is
earned minute by minute, hour by hour, month by month, year
by year, but can be lost quickly if leaders take it for granted and
stop paying attention—and it is nearly impossible to earn back.
What is Credibility Behaviorally?
When asked, most people’s response is, “Leaders do what they
say they will do”: “DWYSYWD.” In other words, people are
considered credible when their words and their deeds are
consonant.
There are two elements in DWYSYWD: “Say”—leaders must be
clear about their beliefs; they must know what they stand for;
“Do”—leaders must put what they say into practice by acting on
their beliefs.
The first of The Five Practices, Model the Way, links directly to
people’s behavioral definition of credibility.

6. PART 2. MODEL THE WAY
Chapter 3. Find Your Voice
To be a credible leader, you first need to engage in two
essentials. You first need to clarify your values by
comprehending fully the values, beliefs, and assumptions that
drive you, choose the principles you’ll use to guide your
actions, and be clear about the message you want to deliver.
You then need to express yourself by communicating your
beliefs in ways that uniquely represent who you are.
In the authors’ research, the people most frequently mentioned
as admired leaders all had strong beliefs about matters of
principle, an unwavering commitment to a clear set of values,
and passion about their causes. The lesson is that we admire
most those who believe strongly in something and are willing to
stand up for their beliefs.
To stand up for your beliefs, you first have to know what they
are. Thus, the corollary to the Kouzes Posner First Law of
Leadership, “If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t
believe the message,” is “You can’t believe in the messenger if
you don’t know what the messenger believes.”
Values Are Guides
“Values are your personal bottom line. They influence every
aspect of our life for example, moral judgements, commitments
to personal and organizational goals, the way you respond to
others” (Kouzes and Posner 2017, p. 54).
Values—defined in the context of Model the Way as “our here-
and-now beliefs about how things should be accomplished” —
supply us with a moral compass by which to navigate the course
of our daily lives. Values are most important in difficult times
when daily challenges can easily throw you off course.

7. Values set the parameters for our decisions, our commitments to
personal and organizational goals, and serve as guides to action.
They empower us by helping us be more in control of our lives,
and they motivate us by keeping us focused on why we’re doing
what we’re doing and the ends toward which we are striving.
Research shows that people who have clarity about personal
values have higher degrees of positive work attributes, such as
organizational commitment to their organization, than do those
who have either low or high levels of organizational clarity. In
other words, clarity about personal values is more important
than clarity about organizational values—and the difference in
positive work attributes between those with clarity about both
personal and organizational values is not significantly different
from those with only high degrees of personal value clarity.
People with the clearest personal values are better prepared to
make choices about whether to commit to an organization or
movement, and they cannot fully commit to an organization that
does not fit with their own beliefs
Leadership begins with something that grabs hold of you and
won’t let go. To find your voice, you must know what you care
about—you must explore your inner territory for the principles
that matter most to you.
You must also listen to the “masters.” The leaders we admire
tell us a lot about our own values and beliefs, and people model
their behavior after those they admire and respect
Express Yourself
Once you have a voice—know what you want to say—you must
express that voice in ways that are uniquely your own, so
people know that you are the one who’s speaking. The words
you choose tell others how you view the world, and each person

8. is free to choose what they want to express and the way they
want to express it.
There are three stages of self-expression. Like an artist, finding
your unique way of expressing yourself as a leader involves:
looking outside yourself for the fundamentals, tools and
techniques others have used
looking inside yourself to see what you need to improve
moving on to become an authentic leader by merging the
lessons from your inner and outer journeys
Your value as a leader is determined not only by your guiding
techniques, but also by your ability to act on them. To
strengthen credibility, you need to continually assess your
abilities and learn new ones.