The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

I finished this book in August 2025. I recommend this book 8/10.

Why you should read this book:

In this book, you will get the important areas to focus on as a leader, along with tools and ways to implement them into your day. If you are a new leader, this book will accelerate your journey, and as an experienced leader, it will remind you of areas you probably need to improve.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. This is a leadership playbook for everyone.

2. A lot of tools to do what's important and to still stay flexible as a leader.

3. Use love to show up every day.

📝 My notes and thoughts

• P6. As essential as it is to create a vision for and to serve your own vertical team, Brian told us, it's equally important to do the same for your peers and those you don't directly manage:

  • If we can get leaders who are adjacent to our area to come help us and then be willing to give them the credit for the help they provide, it doesn't take away from my leadership or my team's contribution at all. This is a powerful way to get a lot more intelligence and mind share and support for something bigger that we all need to be working on. In doing so, we create a win for everybody.

• P12. We first asked people in the early 1980s to tell us what they did when they were at their "personal best" in leading others, and we continue to ask this question of people around the world. After analyzing thousands of these leadership experiences, we discovered, and continue to find, that regardless of the times or settings, individuals who guide others along pioneering journeys follow surprisingly similar paths. Although each experience was unique in this individual expression, there were clearly identifiable behaviors and actions that made a difference. When making extraordinary things happen in organizations, leaders engage in what we call The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership:

  • Model the Way

  • Inspire a Shared Vision

  • Challenge the Process

  • Enable Others to Act

  • Encourage the Heart

• P24. The Five Practices and Ten Commitments of Exemplary Leadership

  • Model the Way:

    • Clarify values by fining your voice and affirming shared 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 seizing the initiative and looking outward for innovative ways to improve.

    • Experiment and take risks by consistently generating small wins and learning from experience.

  • Enable Others to Act:

    • Foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships.

    • Strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence.

  • Encourage the Heart:

    • Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence.

    • Celebrating the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.

• P27. In management meetings, when a question was asked, even though he could have provided the answer himself, Bobby typically referred it to one of his team members, stating, for example, "Yamin is an expert on this topic. I will let him answer this question." During the annual sales conference, attended by hundreds of company employees, he left the most junior team member make the group presentation, while the whole team stood behind the presenter to answer questions.

• P31. For the majority of people to follow someone willingly, they want a leader who they believe is:

  • Honest

  • Competent

  • Inspiring

  • Forward looking

• P49. What would you say if someone were to ask you, "What is your leadership philosophy? Are you prepared right now to say what your leadership philosophy is? If you aren't, you should be. If you are, you need to reaffirm it on a daily basis. Before you can become a credible leader—one who connects "what you say" with "what you do"—you first have to find your authentic voice, the most genuine expression of who you are. If you don't find your voice, you'll end up with a vocabulary that belongs to someone else, mouthing words written by some speechwriter or mimicking the language of some other leader who is nothing like you at all. If the words you speak are not your words but someone else's, you will not, in the long term, be able to be consistent in word and deed. You will not have the integrity to lead.

• P70. Model the Way begins with clarifying values by finding your voice and affirming shared values. This means you must:

  • Identify the values you use to guide choices and decisions.

  • Find your own authentic way of talking about what is important to you.

  • Help others to articulate why they do what they do, and what they care about.

  • Provide opportunities for people to talk about their values with others on the team.

  • Build consensus around values, principles, and standards.

  • Make sure that people are adhering to agreed-upon values and standards.

• P76. If you value service to others, for example, and say that store operators are important, you should be meeting with them in their locations. If you say that you're focused on customers (or clients, patients, students, voters, or parishioners), then you should be spending your time with them. If productivity and improving sales performance are critical, then you need to show up at sales meetings. If innovation is essential, you should be visiting the labs and participating in online open source discussions. Being "there" says more about what you value than any email, tweet, or video ever can.

• P81. He asked each to go to the product wall and select which skis or snowboards they wanted. Then he had them pick out their bindings and boots. After giving them a few minutes to make their decisions, Josh asked them what they were thinking about when they were deciding. He asked them to close their eyes and envision what it would look like to use the new gear: "Feel the cold. Hear the wind whistle. Smell the fresh mountain air." His questions got them thinking about how most people made an emotional (rather than a technical) purchase decision. As all exemplary leaders do, Josh used focused questions to reframe the staff's thinking and their approach to sales. Think about the questions you typically ask in meetings, one-on-ones, telephone calls, and interviews. How do they help to clarify and gain commitment to shared values? What would you like each of your constituents to pay attention to each day? Be intentional and purposeful about the questions that you ask. When you are not around, what questions should others imagine you are going to ask them when you return? What evidence do you want to ask for that shows how people are making decisions consistent with values? What questions should you ask if you want people to focus on integrity, or on trust, or on customer satisfaction, or on quality, innovation, growth, safety, or personal responsibility?

• P82. Ask Purposeful Questions Daily:

  • Teamwork: What did you do today to lend a hand to a colleague?

  • Respect: What did you do today to acknowledge the work of one of your colleagues?

  • Learning: What's one mistake you made in the last week, and what did you learn from it?

  • Continuous Improvement: What have you done in the past week to improve so that you're better this week than last?

  • Customer Focus: What is one change that you made last week that came from a customer suggestion?

• P82. "There is no feedback that Ed won't listen to seriously", one of his direct reports told us. "He doesn't want us to hold anything back, even and especially feedback about his personal performance. He wants to know what's going on—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Everyone has the ability to approach him openly and candidly without fear of him getting angry or defensive."

• P92. To Model the Way, you must set the example by aligning actions with shared values. This means you must:

  • Keep your commitments and follow through on your promises.

  • Make sure your calendar, your meetings, your interviews, your emails, and all the other ways you spend your time reflect what you say is important.

  • Ask purposeful questions that keep people constantly focused on the values and priorities that are the most essential.

  • Broadcast examples of exemplary behavior through vivid and memorable stories that illustrate how people are and should be behaving.

  • Publicly ask for feedback from others about how your actions affect them.

  • Make changes and adjustments based on the feedback you receive; otherwise, people will stop bothering to provide it.

• P101. Attend to the present: The daily pressures, the pace of change, the complexity of problems, and the turbulence in global markets can often hold your mind hostage and make you think that you have neither the time nor the energy to be future-oriented. But attending to the future doesn't mean you have to ignore what is going on in the present. It does, however, mean you have to be more mindful about it. Being mindful of others and your environment is vital, and a growing number of leaders and organizations trust in the power of mindfulness. You have to get off automatic pilot, believing that you know everything you need to know, viewing that world through pre-established categories, and not noticing what's going on around you. To increase your ability to conceive of new and creative solutions to today's problems, you have to be present in the present. You have to stop, look, and listen. As one of IBM's senior development managers, Amit Tolmare says he has learned that "to be able to envision the future, you have to understand the present. You have to listen to your team and feel their pain. Only when you understand the current challenges will you be able to imagine a better tomorrow." Set aside some time each day to stop doing "stuff." Create some white space on your calendar. Remind yourself that your electronic devices have an off switch. Stop the motion. Then start noticing more of what's going on around you right now.

• P104. You need to consider what you're going to do after the current problem, task, assignment, project, or program is completed. "What's next?" should be the question you frequently ask yourself. If you're not thinking about what's happening after the completion of your longest-term project, then you're thinking only as long-term as everyone else is. In other words, you're redundant! The leader's job is to think about the next project, and the one after that, and the one after that. To encourage this perspective, the human resources leadership team at Modern Terminals Limited (Hong Kong) sets time aside each year to consider not simply "what are we doing right?" but more critically, the question "what could we do differently to become an even better human resource team?" They encourage everyone to dream big and share their aspirations for the future.

• P114. A very important part of a leader's job is to clear away the fog so that people can see further ahead, anticipate what might be coming in their direction, and watch out for potential hazards along the road. Clear visions are meant to inspire hope—hope that despite the fog and stormy weather, despite the bumps in the road, despite the unexpected detours, and despite the occasional breakdowns, the crew will make it to its ideal and unique destination.

• P116. To inspire a Shared Vision, you must envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. This means you must:

  • Determine what drives you and where your passions lie in order to identify what you care enough about to imagine how it could be better in the future, compelling and worthwhile.

  • Reflect on your experiences, looking for the major themes in your life and understanding what you find worthwhile.

  • Stop, look, and listen to what is going on right now—the important trends, major topics of conversation, and social discontents.

  • Spend a higher percentage of your time focused on the future, imagining the exciting possibilities.

  • Listen deeply to what is important to others in their future and to what gives their lives meaning and purpose.

  • Involve others in crafting a shared vision of the future. Don't make it a top-down process.

• P141. To inspire a Shared Vision, you must enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations. This means you must:

  • Talk with your constituents and find out about their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future.

  • Make sure your constituents know what makes their products or services unique and special.

  • Show constituents how enlisting in a common vision serves their long-term interest.

  • Be positive, upbeat, and energetic when talking about the future of your organization, and make liberal use of metaphors, symbols, examples, and stories.

  • Acknowledge the emotions of others and validate them as important.

  • Let your passion show in a manner genuinely expressive of who you are.

• P161. "If you only speak to those around you and do not go out of your way to see new perspectives, you will never come up with anything new. New things are challenging and exciting, and it takes going out of your comfort zone to see that." Leaders understand that innovation requires more listening and great communication than routine work does. Successful innovations don't spring from the fifty-second floor of the headquarters building or the back offices of City Hall. You need to establish relationships, network, make connections, and be out and about.

• P164. One way to open yourself up to new information is by taking on multiple perspectives. What can you do to take on more expansive view of your present circumstances? Researchers have suggested three approaches:

  • Take the perspective of someone who frustrates or irritates you, and consider what that person might have to teach you.

  • Listen to what other people have to say; that is, listen to learn rather than to necessarily change their perspective.

  • Seek out the opinions of people beyond your comfort zone, folks you don't typically talk with.

• P165. Even if you've been in your job for years, treat today as if it were your first day. Ask yourself, "If I were just starting this job, what would I do?" Begin doing those things now. Always stay alert to ways to improve your organization. Identify those projects that you've always wanted to undertake but never have. Ask your team members to do the same. Be an adventure, an explorer. Where in your organization have you not been? Where in the communities that you serve have you not been? Make a plan to explore those places. Take a field trip to a factory, a warehouse, a distribution center, or a retail store. Visit with people in a function, department, location, or even client base that intrigues you. You don't have to be at the top of the organization to learn about what's going on around you. Be on the lookout for new ideas, wherever you are.

• P168. To Challenge the Process, you must search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and look outward for innovative ways to improve. This means you must:

  • Do something each day so that you are better than you were the day before.

  • Seek firsthand experiences outside your comfort zone and skill set.

  • Always be asking, "What's new? What's next? What's better?" and not just for yourself but also for those around you.

  • Find a significant purpose for addressing your challenging and most difficult assignments.

  • Ask questions, seek advice, and listen to diverse perspectives.

  • Be adventurous; don't let routines become ruts.

• P172. There's an African proverb that advises, "Never test the depth of the water with both feet." Wise counsel whenever you're trying something brand new. Leaders should dream big but start small.

• P186. "You have to let go and let others make mistakes as long as they're not catastrophic. The most important thing I can do is create a safe highway to operate in, and define clearly what the bumpers are—whether it's a code of conduct or how we make decisions. As long as people are within the boundaries of that highway, then let them go as fast as they can. But if they hit a bumper, pull them in and remind them what the bumper is and why it's there."

• P192. To Challenge the Process, you must experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience. This means you must:

  • Create opportunities for small wins, promoting meaningful progress.

  • Set incremental goals and milestones, breaking big projects down into achievable steps.

  • Keep people focused on what they can control in their work and commit to in their lives.

  • Make it safe for people to experiment and take risks by promoting learning from experience, debriefing successes and failures, capturing lessons learned, and disseminating them broadly.

  • Emphasize how personal fulfillment results from constantly challenging oneself to improve.

  • Continuously experiment with new ideas through small bets.

• P203. Active listening involves more than simply paying attention. The best listeners, according to a study involving nearly 3,500 participants in a coaching skills development program, did much more than remain silent while the other person talked. They demonstrated that they were listening by asking questions that "prompted discovery and insight." The act of active listening is like having a conversation. It requires more than just hearing the other person's words. It means being engaged in a way that makes the conversation a positive experience, causing the person you are listening to feel supported and validated. Showing appreciation for another's unique viewpoint demonstrates respect for them and their ideas.

• P204 "The real competitive advantage of the human worker will be their capacity to create relationships, which means empathy will count more than experience."

• P218. Exemplary leaders Foster Collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships. This means you must:

  • Extend trust to others, even if they haven't already extended it to you.

  • Spend time getting to know your constituents and find out what makes them tick.

  • Show concern for the problems and aspirations others have.

  • Listen, listen, and listen some more.

  • Structure projects so that there is a common goal that requires cooperation, making sure that people understand how they are interdependent with one another.

  • Find ways to get people together face-to-face and increase the durability of their relationship.

• P231. Ana understood something very fundamental about strengthening others: the power to choose rests on the willingness to be held accountable. She learned that the more freedom of choice people have, the more personal responsibility they must accept. There's also a bonus: the more that people believe that everyone else is taking responsibility for his or her part of the project—and has the competence to do it—the more trusting and the more cooperative they're going to be. People will be more confident in doing their part when they believe others will do theirs. This interconnectedness between choice and accountability takes on increasing importance in virtually linked and global workplaces. Another benefit is that as others assume more responsibility, leaders can expend more energy in other areas, enhancing their spheres of influence and bringing additional resources back to their units.

• P242. Peter Drucker, who noted, "The leader of the future asks; the leader of the past tells." The benefits of asking questions are numerous. For one, it gives others the room to think and to frame issues from their perspective. Second, asking questions indicates an underlying trust in people's abilities by shifting accountability, and it has the benefit of creating almost immediate buy-in for the solution. (After all, it's their idea.) Asking questions also puts leaders in a coaching position, more of a guiding role, which frees them up to think more freely and strategically.

• P243. To Enable Others to Act, you must strengthen others by increasing their self-determination and developing competence. This means you must:

  • Take actions that make people feel powerful and in control of their circumstances.

  • Provide people opportunities to make choices about how they do their work and serve their customers.

  • Structure jobs so that people have opportunities to use their judgement, developing both greater competence and self-confidence.

  • Find a balance between people's skills and the challenges associated with their work.

  • Demonstrate your confidence in the capabilities of constituents and colleagues.

  • Ask questions; stop giving answers.

• P253. "I use three pennies to help me practice encouragement," said Ravi Gandhi, chief financial officer, United Auto Credit Corporation. When he gets into work, he sets three pennies on the left side of his computer, and during the day, he says, "I look for opportunities to recognize, thank, and encourage good work that people are doing around me." After encouraging someone, he moves a penny from the left side of the computer to the right side. When not at his desk, he puts the pennies in his left pocket and moves them to the right pocket as he encourages people during the day. This small reminder, explains Ravi, "keeps me mindful of the fact that we live in an encouragement starved-world—I am just trying to do my small part to fix that—at least my work team." If Ravi gets to the end of the day with pennies in his left pocket, he calls his kids and friends on the way home and offers them some encouragement!

• P269. To Encourage the Heart, you must recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence. This means you must:

  • Maintain high expectations about what individuals and teams can accomplish.

  • Communicate your positive expectations clearly and regularly.

  • Create an environment that makes it comfortable to receive and give feedback.

  • Find out the types of encouragement that make the most difference. Don't assume you know. Ask. Take the time to inquire and observe.

  • Be creative when it comes to recognition. Be spontaneous. Have fun.

  • Make saying "thank you" a natural part of your everyday behavior.

• P277. Some people are reluctant to recognize others in public, fearing that it might cause jealousy or resentment. Forget these fears. All winning teams have MVPs (Most Valuable Players), usually selected by their teammates. Public celebrations are meaningful opportunities to reinforce shared values and to recognize individuals for their contributions. They give you a chance to say thanks to specific individuals for their outstanding performance and to remind everyone of exactly what it is that the organization stands for, and the significance of the work or service they provide.

• P294. To Encourage the Heart, you must celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community. This means you must:

  • Find, and also create, occasions to bring people together to publicly celebrate accomplishments.

  • Take actions that demonstrate that you "have people's backs" and ensure they feel "part of the whole."

  • Make fun of a portion of your work environment—laugh and enjoy yourself, along with others.

  • Get personally involved in as many recognitions and celebrations as possible. Show you care by being visible in the tough times.

  • Never pass up an opportunity to relate publicly true stories about how people in your organization went above and beyond the call of duty.

  • Calendar celebrations and look, as well, for spontaneous opportunities to link shared values with victories.

• P309. Bringing your whole self to work requires the kind of self-exploration in which Brian engaged. It requires looking back over your life to understand the experiences that shaped you and the values those experiences taught you. As you continue your journey toward exemplary leadership, you must wrestle with some difficult questions:

  • What were the peak moments in my life, and what motivated me to achieve them?

  • What are the values that should guide my decisions and actions?

  • What do I need to improve my abilities to move this team or organization forward?

  • Where do I think the organization should be headed over the next ten years?

  • What gives me the courage to continue in the face of uncertainty and adversity?

  • How solid are my relationships with my constituents? How trustworthy am I?

  • What can I do to keep hope alive—in others and myself?

• P312. "I tell them I have the secret to success in life. The secret to success is to stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to ignite other people, to see inside other people, to have a greater desire to get things done than other people. A person who is not in love doesn't really feel the kind of excitement that helps them to get ahead and lead others and to achieve. I don't know any other fire, any other thing in life that is more exhilarating and is more positive a feeling than love is."