Customer Reviews

The Leadership Challenge, 3rd Edition

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has been around in various editions for almost twenty years now. One reason for that is that it is an excellent overview of leadership in organizations and how you can do it yourself.

The book's structure follows its basic recommendations. The authors recommend five fundamental practices, each of which has two commandments, for a total of ten. In general, these are both straightforward and insightful. "Challenge the Process" talks about searching for opportunities, experimenting, and taking risks. "Modeling the Way" talks about setting the example and planning small wins. There is also material on "Enabling Others to Act."

Then there are a couple of weaker sections. Sections on inspiring and encouraging simply are too fluffy and lack the support that is given to other points.

Even having said that, this is a book that's worth reading if you are responsible for leadership in an organization of any size. The reason is the way the book came together.

The authors used two different kinds of research to develop their recommendations. They looked at over five hundred leaders, but they looked at them in a particular way.

In each case, they had asked the leader to talk about his or her actions as a leader when they were doing excellent work. In other words, they looked for excellent examples of leadership and tried to draw lessons from them.

They also went to the other side and talked to followers about what they wanted in leaders. When they put those two kinds of research together, you get recommendations that are both practical and, for the most part, behavioral.

Warren Bennis' recent book, Geeks and Geezers, is an excellent companion for this book. In that book, Bennis talks about crucibles of leadership or experiences, which provide intense stress and learning of leadership that form leadership values.

On the plus side this is good, practical, behavioral and helpful if you're responsible for a group of any kind or size. On the downside, some of the language can be fuzzy and simplistic, and some of the concepts, like "Encourage the Heart" sounds just a tad too New Age for my taste.

This is an outstanding book and should be required reading for anyone who manages people or who is getting started in their career and will manage in the future. In addition to providing terrific insights into the art and science of leadership, the book serves as an excellent roadmap for those who want to improve their leadership skills and that of their management team. In addition to their extensive research and powerful discussions on what makes great leaders, the book is an absolute delight to read. Kouzes and Posner's command of the language and easy readability, along with their very relevant case studies and analyses, can help all of us improve our leadership skills and develop more effective organizations.

I am the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who read the original version of this book in the late 1980's. As the five criteria for leadership success discussed in this book, namely -- model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart -- have stood the test of decades of exploration and execution, the subtleties explored in this new edition are a welcome addition to my library of leadership books. I strongly recommend this book and additionally, wholeheartedly recommend Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self as a superlative universal resource for leadership and corporate optimization.

I've just re-read this brilliant book and decided keep it close and periodically review it. It is a collection of ready recipes that you might have known about, but not always apply to practice. Each recipe usually contains one or two small case vignettes.

I can call this book "the encyclopedia of leadership" - the items cover almost the entire area leadership, and the items are small enough to review them quickly.

The drawback of this title is that it doesn't seem to cover problems and tough issues of leadership that always arise. To fill this gap, I can recommend the unique framework by Ronald Heifetz described in the books "Leadership Without Easy Answers" and "Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading".

When the authors look to the leader in context of the organization, the view is a little bit mechanistic: "focus on clear standards, set the goals to keep on track, etc". I do not complete share this mechanistic view. Of course, leaders are important, but I agree with Margaret J. Wheatley who says that organizations are living systems. They are like people, intelligent, creative, adaptive, self-organizing and meaning-seeking. The simpler way to organize human endeavor requires a belief that the world is inherently orderly. The world seeks organization. It doesn't need humans to organize it, it doesn't seem to share our desires for efficiency or neatness, it uses redundancy, fuzziness, dense webs of relationships, and unending trails and errors to find what works; life is intent on finding what works, not what's "right"; life creates more possibilities as it engages with opportunities; life is attracted to order. I can recommend the book "Leadership and the New Science" by Margaret J. Wheatley.

There are the other aspects of leadership that should be scrutinized in much greater detail, but they definitely exceed the size of the single book. "The Leadership Challenge" is an excellent work, but don't stop on it, keep reading the other leadership and self-development books.

As other reviewers have commented; there is a ton of information in this book. I will add; tons of fantastic information! This is a book I have been reading sporadically for the past nine months. Why have I taken so long to read it? I will read it for a while, put it aside, read another book, then return to this one. It is profound. The only book on leadership better than this (maybe): Principle Centered Leadership.

The copy I read was the first edition. I've skimmed through this edition and found that the authors have added websites and other informative stuff to keep it up to date.

Each time I've returned to this book I wonder: why did I ever put it down? If you are a manager or an aspiring leader, like me...Read this one. You'll be glad you did. I know for a fact, this book is required reading for certain business majors.

A great book for leaders on all levels and would be a great training manual.

I know that it's a cliche to call anything other than the Bible, a "Bible," but this is The Leadership Bible, nonetheless. If this is not in your library and a large part of your leadership journey, you are way way way behind the curve. Kouzes and Posner have been conducting some of the most significant leadership reasearch on the planet for over 20 years--and you'll find all that accumulated wisdom in this book.

First published in 1987, The Leadership Challenge, turns out to be the most useful and well-read book in my extensive management library. It does not have the sycophantic following of say, The 7 Habits, but it does adorn the library of many of our best leaders today. Although the book has evolved over the last decade into a how-to book (with planning guide), it remains one of the most authoritative books on the real qualities and characteristics of leadership.
The substance of most management books can be written in a sentence or two. Not with this important work. Barry Posner and James Kouzes have something of value to say in every chapter. If you like stats and backup, they have that too!
The authors outline the five practices of effective leadership: Model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart. This is a winning formula. I know I've tried it. The essence of their message can be found very early in the book: "...For people to follow someone willingly" the leader must demonstrate honesty, vision, competence, and inspiration. That's easier said than done, but it is well said. If you want to lead, read this book.

This book is filled with real-life stories of leaders who met the challenge to lead. It gives practical steps to improving leadership and is actually an interesting read because of the stories that illustrate the points. It's well worth the read and can definitely help you become a better leader.

This is one of the best books I've ever read on leadership. What makes it so great is the practical steps that it outlines you can take to develop your leadership skills. I highly recommend this book to... well everybody.