Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership. James M. Kouzes
are proven by carefully collected data and memorable examples.
For me as someone who mainly works with virtual teams and who has to lead people who are not directly reporting to me or even are on a higher management level, the five practices of extraordinary leadership provide easy-to-apply methods for successful collaboration with my team members. Thank you.”
—Alex Schiller, Senior Global Account Manager Automotive, Micron Technology
JAMES M. KOUZES
BARRY Z. POSNER
Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership
How to Make a Difference Regardless of Your Title, Role, or Authority
Copyright © 2021 by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781119687016 (Hardcover)
ISBN 9781119686903 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119686972 (ePub)
Cover Design: Wiley
PREFACE The Premise and the Promise
The premise of Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership: How to Make a Difference Regardless of Your Title, Role, or Authority is quite simple: leadership is a learnable set of actions and behaviors that is available to everyone. In the pages that follow, we make the case that leadership is not about rank, position, or authority, and we will provide data to support this claim. We'll also share examples of individuals who, as a result of engaging in practices of exemplary leadership, have guided others in making extraordinary things happen in their organizations and communities.
Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership is about what individuals do to effect change and improvement. It is about the behaviors and actions individuals use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, division into unity, and risks into rewards. It's about exercising leadership that contributes to creating an environment in which people can work together to turn perplexing problems and challenging opportunities into remarkable successes.
All too often, when leadership is discussed within workplaces and communities, attention is given primarily to those appointed or elected to positions of authority. While leaders with titles certainly deserve credit for what they do, they are not the only people who matter. In fact, we would argue that there are just as many, probably even more, leaders without titles who contribute to collective achievements and well-being. Workplace and community engagement are not just a function of what formal leaders do; they are also related to how all leaders in organizations behave.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point as it spread across the globe, overwhelming healthcare systems, shutting down a significant number of commerce and educational systems, and totally disrupting the normal way of life for effectively every person on the planet. It has been an unprecedented crisis like no other experienced in our lifetime. While there are—and have to be—global, national, regional, state, and local coordinated efforts to address the pandemic, it is also the many small acts of leadership among doctors, nurses, first responders, teachers, parents, students, volunteers, and other concerned citizens that make a difference. They create novel ways to treat the sick, care for the vulnerable, deal with shortages, produce personal protective equipment, recognize heroes, and even bring a bit of joy to an otherwise tragic and depressing situation.
Another case in point about how tragedy and adversity create opportunities for people to step up and lead, and that leadership arises as much, if not more so, from the bottom up as it does from the top down, is the response to the death of George Floyd while in police custody. His death was the tipping point in long-standing tensions around matters of racial and social justice and police treatment of people of color. Within a day of the event, protests began, first in Minneapolis, where the incident occurred, and then across the United States and in major cities around the world. These were mostly decentralized actions initiated largely by young people of highly diverse backgrounds who had no formal titles or positions. They captured the attention of governments, businesses, and ordinary citizens and supercharged calls for more diversity, equity, and inclusion in every institution.
There continues to be no shortage of challenges facing individuals, organizations, and communities, and no limits to the opportunities and needs for people to lead. We wrote this book to help you prepare to become the best leader you can be and take advantage of the chances you have to make this world a little bit better place than you find it.
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is for and about people who do not have titles, like supervisor, manager, executive, chief, head, director, captain, boss, and the like, or some formal authority over other people. It's intended for front-line workers, new hires, individual contributors, salespeople, analysts, researchers, consultants, professionals, community activists, volunteers, project leads, scientists, engineers, administrators, artists, athletes, attorneys, programmers, coaches, teachers, parents, and all the others who lead without the benefit of hierarchical position or rank. The book aims to help people—no matter their role—strengthen