Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Kouzes and Posner on Leadership

The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner is outdated, having originated in the early 1980's.when everybody was trashing management. Hence why Tom Peters said in the preface to their first edition of 1987 that ''...management as we know it is not dead. But it darned well ought to be!" There is no mention of management in their book. The corollary is an overloaded opinion of leadership. One qoute with this account is that it makes it hard to see how lower level employees can lead. Greater specialization, driven by expanding complexity, demands both functions, not just one.

Kouzes and Posner Focus on Executives not Leaders

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The fundamentals for Kouzes and Posner can be questioned if foremost is viewed as an occasional act instead of as an executive position.

" Leadership is a journey - But a journey has two parts: convincing citizen to join and getting them to the destination. Only the first stage is leadership. The second phase is a management undertaking. Leaders sell the tickets for the journey; managers drive the bus to the destination. This is true even if added injections of leadership are needed to resell the merits of the journey.

" Credibility is the foundation of foremost - But we buy the ideas of eccentrics whom we would not trust to manage anything. Excellent content can sway us even when the promoter (leader) is not personally credible. Character is only required for citizen in executive positions.

" Leadership is a relationship - Managers work closely with citizen to get things done. Because they have power over citizen there needs to be a relationship of trust in the middle of them. It is potential to lead at a length so does not want working relationships. When Martin Luther King led the U.S. Consummate Court to outlaw segregation on buses, he may not have known the citizen in this society or had any relationship, with them.

" To lead you must first look inside yourself and elucidate your values. This is only true to lead within the domain of values, if you want citizen to behave in accordance with approved values. But if you are promoting a new piece of software to your bosses, your personal values are not involved. The examples cited by Kouzes and Posner involve major culture changes, challenges to values. Maybe we should call this values leadership. Managers need to be clear about their values, however, because we can't trust them with so much power over us unless we know where they stand on what is foremost to us.

" You need to be spellbinding to lead - The truth is that leadership style is situational. In scientific and technical organizations, there is a interrogate for "evidence based" decision making. Here, leaders need to cite hard facts to lead and they may do so whether quietly or aggressively, so long as they have the evidence.

Kouzes and Posner figure 5 core practices, but they are a combination of owner and leader actions.

Model the way

Kouzes and Posner tell us that ''Leaders' deeds are far more foremost than their words...Exemplary leaders go first. They go first by setting the example straight through daily actions that demonstrate they are deeply committed to their beliefs.'' This is all very well if you are advocating a turn in values, such as how employees or customers are to be treated. But what if you work at Boeing and you advocate a new form of supersonic passenger jet? How do you model that! Clearly, you can lead by example, but modelling the way cannot be a cornerstone of all leading, unless you assume that it is always based on human values. This may be foremost for political leaders or senior executives but it can't be a requirement for all leaders.

Inspire a shared vision

If you view foremost as a journey, foresight is naturally the destination you want others to join you in pursuing. Kouzes and Posner are right to claim that leaders cannot expect to be followed if they have no idea where they want to go. But advocating a turn to an existing product, an instance of opinion leadership, is hardly visionary. We preserve the word foresight for ideas at the grander end of the scale. Having a best idea only counts as a foresight if it is long term and if it paints a picture of a rather magnificent future. New ideas can range along a continuum from mundane to those that are revolutionary, radical and visionary.

Challenge the process

For Kouzes and Posner being a leader entails initiating ''a turn from the status quo.'' But they are equivocal on this principle, unfortunately so, because it is the main one of their five that characterizes leadership. They start by telling us that leaders ''search for opportunities to innovate, grow, and improve.'' They fast water down this point by saying ''But leaders aren't the only creators or originators of new products, services, or processes.'' notice the phrase "aren't the only''. This implies that Kouzes and Posner see leaders as the occupants of managerial roles. But if all leadership is an informal act, not a position, then championing a new stock is always leadership. Kouzes and Posner acknowledge that new ideas come from ''people on the front lines.'' But, for them ''the leader's traditional gift is in the recognition of good ideas, the preserve of those ideas, and the willingness to challenge the law to get new products...adopted.'' This is a pretty lame version of ''challenging the process''. The suspect for the equivocation is naturally that there is no room in Kouzes and Posner's world for management. If there was, they could say that leaders of course do challenge the status quo, leaving it to managers to do the supporting, developing and facilitating of those who do so.

Enabling others to act and encouraging the heart

There isn't much disagreement in the middle of Kouzes and Posner's fourth and fifth principles. They both quote to facilitating teams of citizen to reach the destination, empowering and motivating them to exert the critical effort. These two law most clearly pertain to the implementation phase of the journey and are the easiest ones to classify as managerial.

The lowest line is that The Leadership Challenge is a widely read book which no doubt inspires executives to heighten their performance, but as an account of leadership it is badly outdated. There are two main problems with it. They make no place for management and they cannot account for acts of leadership surface of the formal (or even informal) role of managing a team of people.

Kouzes and Posner on Leadership

ESSENTIALS LATEST VERSION

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