Leadership Behavior


I’ve just started reading a classic book, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. Now in its fifth edition, the book reports the authors’ findings on leadership from over 30 years of research on the subject.

Kouzes and Posner present what they call The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. They suggest that leaders

  • Model the Way
  • Inspire a Shared Vision
  • Challenge the Process
  • Enable Others to Act
  • Encourage the Heart
As they introduce these five practices, the authors state that leadership is not about personality or charisma, but about behaviors. “The data show that workplace engagement and commitment are significantly explained by how the leader behaves and not at all by any particular characteristic of the constituents. Statistical analyses revealed that a leader’s behavior explains the vast majority of constituents’ workplace engagement.”

The book quotes Caroline Wang, an executive at IBM, who states: “’It is really not about the leader’s personality; it is all about how that individual behaves as a leader.’ That’s what all the data add up to: if you want to have a significant impact on people, on organizations, and on communities, you’d be wise to invest in learning the behaviors that enable you to become the very best leader you can.”

In Section 1 of Called to Lead, we are reminded of this: “Leadership work in health care today is not for the faint of heart, and it requires our fullest attention, deepest commitment, and principled practice.”

Called to Care Action

Be intentional about developing your leadership behavior skills. Read a book at least every quarter on effective leadership, and apply the lessons learned there.


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