Hi this is Brian welcome back to Philosophers Notes TV. Today another great book The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Puzner. The Leadership Challenge subtitle How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations. This is the fifth edition and 25th anniversary edition of a great book.
It's sold millions of copies. John Maxwell, who we covered recently, another authority on leadership, describes this book as one of the five best books he's ever read. And that guy's read a lot of books.
This is a really, really good book. I particularly love it because Kouzes and Puzner are two of the world's leading researchers on the science of leadership. Ultimate leadership is both a science and an art because each individual experience is different.
But they've looked at... thousands of case studies of people at their personal best leadership experiences, and then also done surveys with over 100,000 people to identify what the key characteristics are of a great leader. An exemplary leader is what they describe.
I talk often about how books have different phrases. This one is exemplary leader or exemplary leadership. What does leadership look like at its best? Really good book.
I highly recommend it. If you're only going to read one book on leadership, this is a wise option. We've got Philosopher's Note.
We've got five big ideas here I'm excited to talk about. So out of all of that research that they've done, the authors have identified five practices that all of these great leaders come back to again and again and again. And they say this data has held over the last X decades of their work. And the book is structured around these five.
Practices of exemplary leadership. Very important emphasis on practices by the way. The basic idea here is that you can learn how to be a better leader.
There are behaviors that you can engage in and if you do so consistently with the desire to master them, you can get better at leadership, period. You aren't born a leader or not. Just like everything else we talk about.
You can cultivate your ability to master this domain if you're willing to do the work, aka deliberate practice. So, the five practices that their exemplary leaders engage in are the following. And again, each of these has a section in the book and then a couple of principles each.
So, there's five practices and ten principles. But the basic idea here is that the first thing leaders do is they model the way. The second thing they do is they inspire. A shared vision, very important that it's shared, we'll talk about that more in a moment as well. Then they challenge the process, challenge the process.
The fourth thing they do is they enable others to act, enable action. And then the fifth thing that they do is they encourage the heart. Encourage and I'm gonna look at that I'm an artist today throw up a heart so model the way inspire a shared vision challenge the process enable action encourage the heart very quickly I talked about them briefly in the note but here's a really really quick pass through the modeling the way a leader needs to know who they are what they stand for, what their values are, and they need to be those values.
They need to model the way that they hope the individuals who want to follow their lead want to follow. As we've discussed a number of times, Ralph Waldo Emerson says, what you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say. People are watching what you do and following that way more than what you say.
You need to model the way. The second thing that a great leader does is inspire a shared vision. Inspire literally means to breathe life into.
You need to inspire a vision of the future. Create that sense of hope of we are here, we can go there. Great leaders do that. Then they share it and they connect their followers'values to a shared ideal. They challenge the process.
By definition, we're going to talk about this more in a moment. When you have a big vision, you're going to have challenges in route of that. But they embrace those challenges.
and create a process where they're setting up small wins in pursuit of that big vision. The fourth thing is they enable others to act, right? Leaders aren't doing all the work.
That's not the point. We're not talking about a Lone Ranger. We're talking about people that get others engaged in action.
You've got to enable that. They obviously share a bunch of ways to do that. And then they encourage the heart. We're going to talk about that more in the final big idea as well. But at the end of the day, this is all about...
Doing what you love to do passionately, enthusiastically, energetically, trying to give your best to the world. Five practices. Second big idea here is, and obviously we can talk about that for about a couple years.
Second big idea is the foundation of credibility. So leaders have credibility. It's a very, very important aspect of leadership. You need to be credible in the eyes of others.
That's the foundation of leadership. They talk about what they've discovered to be the four primary characteristics of credibility. And they've done research where they've given, I don't know how many, it might be over 100,000 people a test.
And they say, hey, look, here are 20 characteristics, qualities of a leader. Which seven? Do you think are the most important?
Which seven would you need to see in a leader who you would willingly and excitedly follow out of these 20 characteristics? Well, out of those 20 characteristics, and I share them in the note, you got to pick seven of them. Almost always people pick four of these characteristics. Here they are.
These are the four aspects that create credibility, which is the foundation of leadership. The first thing about these leaders is they're honest. As Maxwell said, they're just absolutely honest. They don't fudge the truth. That's incredibly important to have people that you really want to follow as a leader.
The second thing is they are forward-looking, right? They're inspiring this shared vision. They're not just talking about what happened or what's going on. They're looking forward.
Incredibly important aspect for our credibility as leaders. The third thing is leaders... who are exemplary are competent.
We look at them and say, okay, they know what they're doing. They can get results. Important aspect. And fourth, they're inspiring.
It fires up. They breathe life into our potential. They see that we can be part of something great. Honest, forward-looking, competent, and inspiring. How do you do, how are you doing on each of those characteristics?
Where are you strong? What needs some work? Think about that, reflect on it, then think about how you can.
plus 1% each of these. What can you do to get a little bit stronger in each of these qualities today, remembering that your credibility is the foundation of your leadership ability? Here's a fast way to build your credibility. DWI SYWD. This is their second law of leadership.
Check out the note for the first one and of course the book. D-W-Y-S-Y-W-D. You want credibility? Well then do what you say you will do. Do what you say you will do.
You say you're going to do something? Do it. Period.
Now in the note I talk about Stephen Covey. He says a life of total integrity. Total integrity is the only one worth striving for.
Now, he also says that he was never perfect at that. No one is ever going to be perfect at that. As Maslow says, there are no perfect human beings, but that's the life, total integrity that we want to strive to be, to embody. Do what you say you will do.
D-W-I-S-Y-W-D. And when you fall short, dust yourself off, say needs work. Don't ever waste a bad day. Don't ever waste a failed commitment.
You failed on our commitment? Okay, you can shame yourself or you can say what can I learn here? What needs work?
Where did I fall short? Let me get a little bit better and master this doing what you say you're going to do fourth big idea I Have been two different ideas in the note but vision plus challenges great leaders have a vision that's inspiring Period no one's going around following someone who says hey, you know, I've got this Pretty mediocre idea. I just want to do what everyone else was doing, but I want to do it in an even more boring way because life's kind of boring and kind of sucks, but hey, what do you think?
You want to go? People don't follow people like that. People follow people who lead with a compelling vision, who are audacious and ambitious and willing to say, this is how I think I can make the world a better place.
So the question for you is, what's your vision for your life? for your family, for your creative work. What is it you aspire to bring into the world? And then realize that those big, audacious visions of yours are challenging. By definition, if it was easy to do, it would have already been done.
So you need to embrace the challenges. Great leaders realize it's going to be challenging. So as they inspire a shared vision, they also challenge the process.
And they learn to eat stress like an energy bar, anti-fragile style. They're not shocked by the first time something's hard. Of course it's going to be hard. You set these huge, big visions. Then what you want to do is chunk it down.
Domino's style, as we talk about all the time, right? Little tiny goals. Create wins.
Create momentum so you can celebrate those successes and have the energy for the long haul that it's going to take to bring your vision to life. The other thing here is that when they interview individuals who... are describing their personal best leadership experience, right?
So if I asked you, when were you at your absolute best as a leader? Whether it was as a mom or dad or a CEO or an entrepreneur or an artist or a coach or a teacher or whatever, when were you at your absolute best as a leader? Now in their work, they say that every single time the individual shared an experience in which they were challenged.
Their best did not come out when there was just status quo and it was easy. It was when they were challenged. Therefore, we need to recognize that challenge is a requirement of getting our best out of us.
And then the fifth big idea here is love. Final section is encouraging the heart. We got to remember that courage literally comes from the Latin word for heart.
So courage is basically the virtue that vitalizes all the other virtues. Courage is what gives you the power. It's your heart.
Just like your heart vitalizes your arms and legs and other organs, courage is the virtue that vitalizes everything else. Without courage, without a heart to give your best when it matters most, nothing else matters. If you want to encourage people, you got to give them courage.
You got to give them love. Give them a sense of direction. And they say that this is the best kept secret.
Loving your life. Loving what you do. Loving the people with whom you do it.
Loving the people who you're blessed to serve. Love. Final words of the book are awesome.
Basically, tap into the power of love. If you want to tap into your power as a leader. And I like to say in the Leadership 101 class I'm creating right now and I'll be filming next week, we'll be sharing soon.
We're going to talk about being a hero. Not in the traditional sense of, oh, that person's a hero and I'm not. But in the classic sense of a hero. The word hero comes from the Greek word protector. A hero is a protector.
A hero is someone who has the strength for two. And their greatest asset is love. They're driven by a sense of love, a sense of and a desire to serve as profoundly as they can and to do all that work for the love of what they're doing and the people with whom they're doing it and the people for whom they're doing it.
So tap into the secret weapon as you cultivate your vision, embrace the challenges, do what you say you will do. D-W-Y-S-Y-W-D. That is awesome. We need one rule for leadership and for life. There you go.
And then you get really good when you actually do that of quit saying you're going to do things unless you're going to do it. We're all a work in progress on that, myself included. Exciting to get 1% better.
And then what's the foundation of leadership? Credibility. We talked about the four attributes of credibility. Honesty, forward-lookingness, competence, and being inspiring. How are you doing on that?
Inventory-wise, how can you improve? And then our five practices, modeling the way, being the change we want to see, inspiring a shared vision, again, painting that vision of the future, challenging the process, enabling action in others, get them fired up consistently and over the long run, and then encouraging the heart. Super quick look at this great book.
I hope you enjoyed. And I think you'll really, really enjoy this book. Tons of great books out there. This one's solid.
I think I particularly love it because it's so research-oriented. I mentioned in the introduction to the note that it reminds me in the sense of how research-oriented it is of the seven principles for making marriage work. John Gottman has been at it for basically as long as these guys, decades, and he's figured out the science of what makes a marriage work.
There's a lot of opinion out there from authors or therapists who talk about what they think works. Which is awesome and a lot of it does work, but it's amazing to see the data-driven evidence of what truly works. Same thing with this in the leadership context.
So I just love that data-driven, evidence-based scientific perspective and applying it to our lives. But there you go. The Leadership Challenge.
Hope you enjoyed this, got something out of it. What was your favorite big idea? And how can you step even more fully into the challenge that is you being the leader you're destined to be?
Get on that. Have another awesome day. See ya. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math, to science, to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live?
For some wacky reason, Optimal Living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that, and you're too busy to read full-time to catch up. Yet, if you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential.
So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know, those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up.
Then imagine Imagine that guy, me, connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical Optimal Living 101 classes on stuff like Purpose 101, Confidence 101, Business 101, Meditation 101, that sort of thing.
You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus modern science plus common sense plus virtue plus mastery plus fun. That's what our Optimize membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us.
Check us out at brianjohnson.me slash join.