The Leadership Challenge Essay Example for Free

The Leadership Challenge Essay Challenges are what this book expands on, most especially, challenges pertaining to traditions and myths about leadership. Kouzes and Posner look at the issue of leadership and ask, What’s new, and what’s different? Through their research they conclude that even if the context has changed, the real meat of leadership remains the same. In their book The Leadership Challenge, the authors provide real examples of what true leaders really are and suggest that anyone can do the same and practice these principles so that they shine as leaders in their own spheres of work or activity. Written in 1987, many thought it would be one of those books on leadership but since it comes at a time when the world is undergoing a lot of changes and there is a big demand on excellence. The newest edition emphasize once again that the fundamentals of leadership, the very essence of what it means to be a good leader is the same today as it was two decades ago. Thus, they posit that â€Å"Leaders do exhibit certain distinct practices when they are doing their best. Good leadership is not only an understandable but also a universal process†¦and Leadership is not a private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary managers use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others.† Perhaps this is what makes the book a hit. The authors are able to hit the weak spot of readers as the challenge is brought out to everyone to do their best because being a true leader requires the very same characteristics that one may already be doing in his own field of work, yet just needs some honing. Thus, the context may change – like there are many modern things that had been changing globally, and in this aspect, leadership has changed dramatically; yet the very essence of leadership is still the same, such as the values and virtues that one cultivates in ordinary life. The book is divided into seven parts with thirteen (13) chapters. It helps that the authors are real leaders themselves. Consider this: Jim Kouzes is Chairman Emeritus of the Tom Peters Company and an Executive Fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. Meanwhile, co-author Barry Posner is Dean of the Leavey School of Business and Professor of Leadership at Santa Clara University. They come up with a Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) and other publications have made them the authors to beat. Part One of the book establishes the background of what leadership is all about. They challenge readers on how people can be made to follow leadership—that is, by free choice. Thus, they were able to identify five common practices common to most extraordinary leadership. They maintain that leaders do their best when they challenge, inspire, enable, model and encourage. Leaders interact well with their followers. Right from the start they provide real life examples such as that Tom Melohn who in a period of eight years increased the sales of the North American Tool and Die (NATD) by a factor of 5, increasing its pretax profits by 750 percent, and decreasing annual turnover from 27 percent to 4 percent. By year eight, NATD was ready to open a new plant which Melohn calls â€Å"Plant 20† receiving its ninth â€Å"vendor of the year† award. From there the authors analyze how Melohn did it considering that he could not even hammer a nail or screw the license plates onto his car, claiming he has never read a book on business since his studies focused on history. He was merely a peddler of packaged goods. He attributes his success because: â€Å"We set three objectives for NATD. First, we planned to from the company profitably. Second, to share the wealth among employees. And third, and equally critical, it was important to have fun—not just the two owners, but all our employees.† From this the authors dissect Melohn’s leadership capabilities within the company. It is in these examples, peppered all throughout the book, which makes The Leadership Challenge a great read. Readers are able to identify with the true-to-life examples of ordinary men and women who did their best to make their lives and those of others memorable. The quality and type of leadership depends, in part, on the attitude or stance of the organizational head. The general outlook of companies with regards to community service and mitigation of negative externalities may have originated from its founder. Leadership is a primary aspect of management, and an effective leader is someone who knows how to motivate the colleagues to act for the attainment of goals. Good leadership will empower employees to become collaborators in the programs. A holistic organizational participation thus dispels the notion that innovations of management are just personal whims of the managers. Good leadership is a response to the changing attitude and values of the clients and the society, and to get obstinately stuck in the old notion of sheer profit-making is placing one’s self under the risks of being static. Thus, the authors explain that once successful companies are no longer successful because they have become static along the way when they failed to change and adapt. The authors also underscore that successful leaders have well-designed strategy for planned change. Good leaders also possess well-planned out strategies which are major courses of action adhered to by an organization in order to meet its goals. They are the company’s methods of responding to threat and opportunities. Their philosophies, programs, practices and decisions, must be in line with the other systems and activities of the organization. Good leaders possess good business ethics, in that it is the ultimate act of deviating from the former exploitative system of capitalism and industrialization. Balancing between strategic logic and social involvement with tangible projects may actually be an implementation of ethic’s moral rights model. Yet the authors provide readers with excellent examples of a leadership model which is not based on power. Rather, it is based on the tools that leaders use to encourage people to be involved in accomplishing the company’s goals by making â€Å"extraordinary things happen,† as the authors refer to. Prominent in each chapter are examples of leaders who were able to overcome crisis situations. The authors maintain that knowledge is not the sole capability of the leaders. They argue that knowledge is distributed in all levels of the organization and that in order for the organization to benefit from the knowledge of the other men and women in it, they must be empowered well. Thus they state that it is not a matter of making people feel that they are part of the company. Rather it is a matter of making people part of it. Thus, it is not based on feeling. There is more a reaching out of leaders to these employees such that they are encouraged to be true followers pursuing the goals of the organization. Finally, the authors argue that empowerment of all members is very important in making changes more effective. The more involved people are in the process of change, the more effective the change will be and the more lasting it will be for the company Good leaders today enhance their ability to influence their subordinates in order to facilitate efficient decision making process within the organization. This means enhanced strategies in motivating and influencing employees to achieve their tasks. The core need for good leaders is to have the ability to communicate well with employees their roles in the accomplishment of organizational goals and targets. There are lots of valuable leadership forms in the book which many leaders could use. They represent the most effective and the least effective leadership strategy. The issues of motivation are also delved into in the book and this is the prime mover for many workers. Workers need affirmation that what they are doing is correct and exceptional. The inability of the leader to convey the message that job is well done only demoralizes them. This invokes feelings of uselessness and diminishing self-worth eventually giving no incentive to perform a good job anymore. To be extremely coercive is not an effective communication tool for workers would not be able to confirm their role in the over-all design to achieve the goals. The authors end the book with the Leadership Practices Inventory which was developed to empirically measure the conceptual framework developed in the case studies of managers’ personal best experiences as leaders. This puts a nail in the many concepts that they posit in the entire book. Today, there are researches that investigate how the inventory is related to other independent measures of managerial effectiveness.