James M. Kouzes

Shared values are the foundation for building productive and genuine working relationships. Exemplary leaders honor the diversity of their many constituencies, but they also stress common values.

Leaders don't wait for permission or specific instructions before jumping in. They make something happen when they notice what isn't working, create a solution for the problem, gain buy-in from constituents, and implement the desired outcome.

A small win is “a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance.” It identifies a place to begin.

Leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships.

Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.

The domain of leaders is the future. The work of leaders is change. The most significant contribution leaders make is not to today's bottom line; it is to the long-term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow.

Being humble and letting others shine comes back to you many times over.

Challenge is the crucible for greatness. Every single personal-best leadership case involved a change from the status quo.

For people to have confidence in the competence of their leader, they need to believe that the person knows the business and understands the current operation, culture, and people in the company.

Leaders who were clear about their values delivered as much as five times greater returns for their organizations as did leaders of weak character.

Trust comes from understanding each other's values and understanding our experiences and what we stand for. In order for that to happen, we've got to be vulnerable, and we have to be open.

Leaders forge unity of purpose by showing their constituents how the dream is a shared dream and how it fulfills the common good.

When you strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence, they are more likely to give it their all and exceed their own expectations.

Genuine acts of caring draw people forward, which is an important lesson.

When leaders breathe life into dreams and aspirations, people are much more willing to enlist in a common cause.

People continue to want their leaders to be truthful, to know what they are doing and talking about, to demonstrate genuine enthusiasm and a positive outlook, and to have a sense of direction.

Honest, competent, inspiring, and forward-looking are the essential characteristics people want in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow.

Leaders are expected to have a point of view about the future and to articulate exciting possibilities.

Credibility makes a difference, and leaders must take it personally. Loyalty, commitment, energy, and productivity depend upon it.

When words and deeds are congruent, 'credible' is the judgment handed down.

What drives all of us is that we want to do something meaningful for the people we work with, where it really helps them grow and do something better for the people around us.

Nicole's experience reaf firms that when people believe that their values and those of the or ganization align, they are the most loyal.

Conversations and discussions, like those at the law school, remind people of why they care about what they are doing.

You cannot mandate unity; instead, you forge it by involving people in the process, making them feel that you are genuinely interested in their perspectives and that they can speak freely with you.

A shared understanding of values emerges from a process, not a pronouncement.

Shared values are the result of listening, appreciating, building consensus, and resolving conflicts.

How you spend your time is the single clearest indicator of what's important to you.

The words people choose to use are metaphors for concepts that define attitudes, behaviors, structures, and systems.

How leaders use their time shows others that they are serious about their dedication to the group, the task, and the values shared.

You can't learn very much if you're unwilling to find out more about the impact of your behavior on the performance of those around you.

Exemplary leaders know that people learn lessons from how people handle the unplanned as well as planned events on the schedule.

Critical incidents present opportunities for leaders to teach important lessons about appropriate norms of behavior.

Through stories, leaders pass on lessons about shared values, define culture, and get others to work together.

All exemplary leaders understand that you have to reinforce the fundamental values that are essential to building and sustaining the kind of culture you want.

Leaders are dreamers. Leaders are idealists. Leaders are possibility thinkers. All ventures, big or small, begin with the belief that what today is merely a yearning will one day be reality.

Envisioning and intuiting aren't logical activities, and they're extremely difficult to explain and quantify.

Leadership requires you to spend considerable time reading, thinking, and talking about the long-term view, not only for your specific organization but also for the environments in which you're operating.

The central task for leaders is inspiring a shared vision, not selling their personal view of the world.

People want to be a part of the vision development process. They want to walk alongside their leaders.

If you want to get the best results, make sure you practice what you preach.

Exemplary leaders are forward-looking—a quality constituents clearly expect of leaders. They envision the future, and gaze across the horizon seeing greater opportunities to come.

Being able to envision the future is decidedly important and has a tremendous impact on people's motivational levels and workplace productivity.

People commit themselves fully and deliver their best only if they share the same passion as the leader does, and it's critical that they can picture their own aspirations in the shared vision.

A very important part of a leader's job is to clear away the fog so that people can see further ahead, anticipate what might be coming in their direction, and watch out for potential hazards along the road.

You cannot lead through someone else's values or someone else's words. You cannot lead out of someone else's experience. You can only lead out of your own.

People need vast reserves of energy and excitement to sustain commitment to a distant dream. Leaders are an important source of that energy.

Visions stretch people to imagine exciting possibilities, breakthrough technologies, and revolutionary social change.

When leaders include vivid images in their communications, they’re transporting employees to the future by telling snippets of a compelling story—a story that captures events that have yet to unfold.

Using image-based language and creating a connection between personal aspirations and a shared vision is not only for leaders of social movements or product development teams. It applies equally to teams in workplaces like yours.

Leaders like Cheryl embrace the power of symbolic language to communicate a shared identity and give life to visions.

To foster team spirit, breed optimism, promote resilience, and renew faith and confidence, leaders look on the bright side. They keep hope alive.

He talked about his deep-seated belief that it was possible to coexist with wild animals, even in a world where humans had destroyed much of their natural habitat.

Leaders must breathe life into visions, animating them so that others can experience what it would be like to live and work in that ideal and unique future.

Leaders tap into people's hearts and minds, not merely their hands and wallets.

Exemplary leaders challenge for meaning's sake and with a drive to take actions for the better.

Innovation requires the use of outsight. The sibling of insight (the ability to apprehend the inner nature of things), outsight (the awareness and understanding of outside forces) comes through openness.

Successful leaders need to encourage the sharing of information from all stakeholders, to be receptive to different ideas no matter the source, and to use the collective knowledge to come up with an effective solution to any challenge.

You can enhance people's opinions about your competence by asking questions and seeking advice from people who know what they are talking about.

Exemplary leadership requires outsight, not just insight. The quest for change is an adventure. It tests your will and your skill.

The prerequisite to enlisting others in a shared vision is genuineness.

Quiet confidence works, too. Introverted individuals like Patrick and myself can be effective leaders. All that you need are conviction, sincerity, and passion.

Exemplary leaders understand that it’s not their personal view of the future that’s important; it’s embracing the aspirations of their constituents that matter most.

Leaders seize the initiative themselves and encourage initiative in others. They want people to speak up, offer suggestions for improvement, and be straightforward about their constructive criticism.

A leader needs to be brave enough to go against the tide in order to improve a process.

Knowing that ideas can come from anybody allows a leader never to miss an opportunity for innovation.

Leaders should dream big but start small.

Enlisting others is all about igniting passion for a purpose and moving people to persist against great odds.

Success does not breed success, researchers conclude; success breeds failure. It is failure that breeds success.

Learning is the master skill. When you fully engage in learning—when you throw yourself wholeheartedly into experimenting, reflecting, reading, or receiving coaching—you are going to experience the thrill of improvement and the taste of success.

Regardless of the field, there is no success without the possibility of failure.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from setbacks and continue to pursue a vision of the future.

When people believe that you have their interests at heart—that you care about them—they're more likely to be open to your influence.

The fact that trust among team members goes up when people share knowledge and information, and the fact that performance increases as a result, underscores how important it is for leaders to stay focused on the needs of their team.

To collaborate, as documented by both Cristian and Divya, people have to be able to rely and depend on one another.

People who expect their interactions to be more than a single incident, who believe they will continue to interact with one another in the future, and who like being in a relationship are more likely to cooperate in the present.

Trust is the lifeblood of collaboration. To create and sustain the conditions for long-lasting connections, you have to be able to trust others, they have to trust you, and they have to trust each other.

The challenge in facilitating relationships is making sure people recognize how much they need one another to excel—how truly interdependent they are.

Help begets help, just as trust begets trust. By supporting norms of reciprocity and structuring projects to reward joint efforts, you enable people to understand that it's in their best interest to cooperate.

High-performing organizations result from people willing to work beyond their job descriptions, and this is because they have the latitude and discretion to make choices about both the work they do and how they do it.

Building trust is a process that begins when someone (either you or the other party) is willing to risk being the first to open up, to show vulnerability, and to let go of control.

Active listening involves more than simply paying attention. The best listeners, according to a study involving nearly 3,500 participants in a coaching skills development program, did much more than remain silent while the other person talked.

Demonstrating empathy goes a long way in building trust. Empathy is the critical twenty-first-century skill.

Exemplary leaders know that you need to see the world through others' eyes and make sure that you consider alternative viewpoints.

For them to be open to sharing their ideas, their frustrations, and their dreams with you, they have to believe that you'll be caring and constructive in your responses.

One way to demonstrate your competence is to share what you know and encourage others to do the same.

Exemplary leaders Foster Collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships.

Exemplary leaders are always asking, “What can we learn?” when things don't go as expected.

To develop a growth mindset and to nourish it in others, you need to embrace the challenges you face. That's where the learning is.

When people feel they own something, that it's theirs, they will take care of it.

When you increase the latitude and discretion of your constituents, you also have to increase expenditures on training and development.

Strengthening others, as Jeff's experience demonstrates, requires up-front investments in initiatives that develop people's competencies and foster their confidence. Such investments produce profits.

Making people smarter is the job of every leader. In today's world, if your constituents aren't growing and learning in their jobs, they're highly likely to leave and find better opportunities.

Remember that your constituents can't act like owners and provide leadership if they lack a fundamental understanding of how the organization operates.

By building people's belief in themselves, you are bolstering their inner strength to forge ahead in uncharted terrain, to make tough choices, to face opposition and the like because they believe in their skills and decision-making abilities.

All exemplary leaders make the commitment to Recognize Contributions. They do it because people need encouragement to function at their best and continue to persist over time when the hours are long, the work is hard, and the task is daunting.

Exemplary leaders elicit high performance because they firmly believe in the abilities of their constituents to achieve even the most challenging goals.

Believing in others is an extraordinarily powerful force in propelling greater performance.

Goals give recognition context. They give people something to strive for, something important to attain.

Openness to feedback, especially negative feedback, is characteristic of the best learners, and it's something all leaders, especially aspiring ones, need to cultivate.

When leaders provide a clear sense of direction and feedback along the way, they encourage people to reach inside and do their best.

Encouragement is more personal and positive than other forms of feedback, and it's more likely to accomplish something that other forms cannot: strengthening trust between leaders and their constituents.

If you can't recognize something specific, you're not paying attention. And good leaders pay attention. They know their people.

People are just more willing to follow someone that they feel knows who they are and what they need. Feeling a connection with others motivates people to work harder for the simple reason that people don't like to disappoint or let down individuals they consider friends.

Performance improves when leaders publicly honor those who have excelled and been an example to others when they demonstrate that 'we are all in this together,' and when they make the work environment a place where people want to both be and stay.

Exemplary leaders know that promoting a culture of celebration fuels the sense of unity essential for retaining and motivating today's workforce.

Public ceremonies, like the one Ray described, serve as a collective reminder of why people remain with an organization, and of the values and visions they share.

By making celebrations a public part of organizational life, leaders create a sense of community.

To generate community-wide energy and commitment for the common cause, you need to celebrate successes in public.

Groups made up of friends, on the other hand, talk with one another right from the project's get-go. They evaluate ideas more critically, give timely feedback when others are veering off course, and offer teammates positive encouragement every step of the way.

Our data shows that people feel connected and experience a strong sense of team spirit when their leaders provide lots of appreciation and support for their contributions.

Having fun sustains productivity, creating what researchers refer to as 'subjective well-being.

When you set the example, like Mushfiq, that says, 'Around here we say thanks, show appreciation, and have fun,' others will follow your lead.

By telling stories, you accomplish more effectively the objectives of teaching, mobilizing, and motivating than you can through bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation or tweets on a mobile device.

Leaders make celebrations as much a part of their organization's life as they can.

You have the potential to lead others to places they have never been. But before you can lead others, you have to believe that you can have a positive impact on others.

The instrument of leadership is the self, and mastery of the art of leadership comes from mastery of the self.

Humility is the antidote for hubris. You can avoid excessive pride only when you recognize that you're human and need the help of others.

Leadership is in the moment. There are many moments each day when you can choose to lead. Each day you can choose to make a difference.

The most meaningful and important way that you can take charge of becoming an exemplary leader is to make learning leadership a daily habit.

The secret to success is to stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to ignite other people, to see inside other people, to have a greater desire to get things done than other people.

A person who is not in love doesn't really feel the kind of excitement that helps them to get ahead and to lead others and to achieve.

Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting.

The best-kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations provide, and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services.

Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.

Leadership is about relationships, about credibility, about passion and conviction, and ultimately about what you do.

At the very beginning of a journey like this, it's about getting to know each other personally.

Great leadership potential is discovered, and unlocked, when you seek to understand the desires and expectations of your constituents, and when you act on them in ways that are congruent with their norms and image of what an exemplary leader is and does.

People who are clear about their personal values (quadrants 3 and 4) are significantly more committed than either those who've heard the organizational litany but have never listened to their own inner voice (quadrant 2) or the people who are not clear about their personal values nor those of their organization (quadrant 1).

Leaders like Jan realize that for visions to be compelling, people at every level must understand what it means for them.

Exemplary leaders don't impose their visions of the future on people; they liberate the vision that's already stirring in their constituents.

To get people to do things they have never been done before, you make progress incrementally.

I think I learned more from my failures than from my successes in all my years as a CEO. I think of my failures as a gift. Unless you view them that way, you won't learn from failure, you won't get better —and the company won't get better. - A. G. Lafley

The only way to create an efficient and effective organization is to give people the chance to use their best judgment in applying their knowledge and skills.

Developing competence and building confidence are essential to delivering on the organization's promises and maintaining the credibility of leaders and team members alike.

When people feel a strong sense of affiliation and attachment to their colleagues, they're much more likely to have a higher sense of personal well-being, to feel more committed to the organization, and to perform at higher levels.

Leadership is an observable pattern of practices and behaviors, and a definable set of skills and abilities. And any skill can be learned, strengthened, honed, and enhanced, given the motivation and desire, along with practice, feedback, role models, and coaching.

Shared values are the foundation for building productive and genuine working relationships. Exemplary leaders honor the diversity of their many constituencies, but they also stress common values.

Leaders don't wait for permission or specific instructions before jumping in. They make something happen when they notice what isn't working, create a solution for the problem, gain buy-in from constituents, and implement the desired outcome.

A small win is “a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance.” It identifies a place to begin.

Recognizing the hard work of others is significant for encouraging team members.

Be clear about your choices and principles.

If you want to accomplish amazing things you have to empower your team members to make their own choices.

Foundation of Credibility: Honest, Forward-looking, Competent, Inspiring

Set an example: Take personal responsibility and set an example of the behavior you expect of others.

Forward-thinking: People want their leaders to have a clear idea of where they are headed. They want them to envision a better future and work toward it, rather than merely living with the current status quo.

Inspiring: The emotional energy that a leader puts forward will infect her whole team. A leader must be able to communicate her vision in such a way that other people understand her passion and believe that it will improve lives.

Competent: People want their leader to be capable, effective, and experienced; no one wants to follow someone who may lead them into failure.

Honesty is considered a personal quality more than a professional one, and its importance illustrates that people want to follow leaders they can personally respect and identify with.

Leadership is a skill—one that can be learned, practiced, and mastered by anyone willing to put in the effort.

Anyone can be a leader. Exemplary leaders exist everywhere, in every geography, industry, and demographic. In the best organizations, everyone is encouraged to act like a leader

Leaders recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence.

You can't command commitment; you have to inspire it. You have to enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations.

Leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships.

Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.

The domain of leaders is the future. The work of leaders is change. The most significant contribution leaders make is not to today's bottom line; it is to the long-term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow.

Trust comes from understanding each other's values and understanding our experiences and what we stand for. In order for that to happen, we've got to be vulnerable, and we have to be open.

Leaders forge unity of purpose by showing their constituents how the dream is a shared dream and how it fulfills the common good.

When you strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence, they are more likely to give it their all and exceed their own expectations.

Genuine acts of caring draw people forward, which is an important lesson.

When leaders breathe life into dreams and aspirations, people are much more willing to enlist in a common cause.

People continue to want their leaders to be truthful, to know what they are doing and talking about, to demonstrate genuine enthusiasm and a positive outlook, and to have a sense of direction.

Honest, competent, inspiring, and forward-looking are the essential characteristics people want in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow.

Leaders are expected to have a point of view about the future and to articulate exciting possibilities.

Credibility makes a difference, and leaders must take it personally. Loyalty, commitment, energy, and productivity depend upon it.

When words and deeds are congruent, 'credible' is the judgment handed down.

If you want to get the best results, make sure you practice what you preach.

Exemplary leaders are forward-looking—a quality constituents clearly expect of leaders. They envision the future, and gaze across the horizon seeing greater opportunities to come.

Being able to envision the future is decidedly important and has a tremendous impact on people's motivational levels and workplace productivity.

People commit themselves fully and deliver their best only if they share the same passion as the leader does, and it's critical that they can picture their own aspirations in the shared vision.

A very important part of a leader's job is to clear away the fog so that people can see further ahead, anticipate what might be coming in their direction, and watch out for potential hazards along the road.

People need vast reserves of energy and excitement to sustain commitment to a distant dream. Leaders are an important source of that energy.

The prerequisite to enlisting others in a shared vision is genuineness.

Quiet confidence works, too. Introverted individuals like Patrick and myself can be effective leaders. All that you need are conviction, sincerity, and passion.

Exemplary leaders understand that it’s not their personal view of the future that’s important; it’s embracing the aspirations of their constituents that matter most.

Leaders seize the initiative themselves and encourage initiative in others. They want people to speak up, offer suggestions for improvement, and be straightforward about their constructive criticism.

A leader needs to be brave enough to go against the tide in order to improve a process.

Knowing that ideas can come from anybody allows a leader never to miss an opportunity for innovation.

Leaders should dream big but start small.

Success does not breed success, researchers conclude; success breeds failure. It is failure that breeds success.

Learning is the master skill. When you fully engage in learning—when you throw yourself wholeheartedly into experimenting, reflecting, reading, or receiving coaching—you are going to experience the thrill of improvement and the taste of success.

Building trust is a process that begins when someone (either you or the other party) is willing to risk being the first to open up, to show vulnerability, and to let go of control.

Active listening involves more than simply paying attention. The best listeners, according to a study involving nearly 3,500 participants in a coaching skills development program, did much more than remain silent while the other person talked.

Demonstrating empathy goes a long way in building trust. Empathy is the critical twenty-first-century skill.

Exemplary leaders know that you need to see the world through others' eyes and make sure that you consider alternative viewpoints.

For them to be open to sharing their ideas, their frustrations, and their dreams with you, they have to believe that you'll be caring and constructive in your responses.

One way to demonstrate your competence is to share what you know and encourage others to do the same.

Exemplary leaders Foster Collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships.