The Leadership Challenge. Posner Barry Z.

purpose: “Enriching Lives.” On the header is the company name. The first pillar is labeled “Customer Service and Selling”; the second is “Financial Success”; and the third is “Great Workplace.” “The key thing,” Anna explains, “is that all three pillars are in alignment and the same height. If one pillar were higher than the others, the roof would fall off.”

      Another of Anna's major initiatives was a refresh of the Beaverbrooks Way, a one-page document, originally published in 1998, that codified the purpose and values of Beaverbrooks. It was not that the values had changed, but that the document was incomplete and unclear. “There was nothing about being a jeweler, and the family values were not referred to,” Anna told us. “The values were also open to individual interpretation rather than stating what these values mean in Beaverbrooks.” Anna wanted as many people as possible to provide input on a revised Beaverbrooks Way, and she spent twelve months gathering information. She asked questions about it in focus groups, she talked about it with trainee managers, and she sent out feedback forms to all the stores and departments.

      She received extensive comments and, with the help of the regional managers, created a supporting document that they introduced at the annual company meeting. In her introduction to this thirty-two-page booklet, Anna wrote:

      I received a lot of feedback about what you wanted to see from the Beaverbrooks Way going forward. You asked for clear and simple language, more explanation of our values and behaviors, and more of a working document. This document is a result of your feedback.. [It] includes “The Beaverbrooks Way” (who we are, what we do, why we exist, and our values) and highlights our behaviors – simply. Our behaviors are defined by examples to help bring our culture to life.

      As much as Anna's attention focuses on improving business performance, she also takes to heart her constituents' desire for a caring and supportive leader. For example, she told us, “We find as many excuses as possible to celebrate successes. I think it's important that people feel recognized and rewarded and valued for the difference they make.” From quarterly business reviews with regional managers to informal office gatherings, Anna takes the time to turn the spotlight on those who do the right things. As they say in the Beaverbrooks Way, “When we recognize what is working well and creating success, we are more likely to repeat the behavior that helped create the success in the first place.” Repeating behaviors that create success is paying off. In the most recent ranking by The Sunday Times, Beaverbrooks was the top retailer on the list. Profits were also at an all-time high, proving that you can be both a great workplace and a profitable business.

      Given her experiences, what's the most important leadership lesson Anna would pass along to emerging leaders? “Being a role model is absolutely key,” she says. “It's something I've held very close to me throughout my career, whether it's on the selling floor or in the executive office. People who model the behaviors that are crucial to business success inspire others.”

      The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership^®

      In undertaking their leadership challenges, Brian and Anna seized the opportunity to change business as usual. And while their stories are exceptional, they are not unlike countless others. We've been conducting original global research for over thirty years, and we've discovered that such achievements are commonplace. When we ask leaders to tell us about their Personal-Best Leadership Experiences – experiences that they believe are their individual standards of excellence – there are thousands of success stories just like Brian's and Anna's. We've found them in profit-based firms and nonprofits, agriculture and mining, manufacturing and utilities, banking and healthcare, government and education, and the arts and community service. These leaders are employees and volunteers, young and old, women and men. Leadership knows no racial or religious bounds, no ethnic or cultural borders. Leaders reside in every city and every country, in every function and every organization. We find exemplary leadership everywhere we look. We've also found that in excellent organizations, everyone, regardless of title or position, is encouraged to act like a leader. In these places, people don't just believe that everyone can make a difference; they act in ways to develop and grow people's talents, including their leadership. They don't subscribe to the many myths that keep people from developing their leadership capabilities and organizations from creating leadership cultures.4

      One of the greatest myths about leadership is that some people have “it” and some don't. A corollary myth is that if you don't have “it,” then you can't learn “it.” Neither could be further from the empirical truth. After reflecting on their Personal-Best Leadership Experiences, people come to the same conclusion as Tanvi Lotwala, revenue accountant at Bloom Energy: “All of us are born leaders. We all have leadership qualities ingrained. All that we need is polishing them up and bringing them to the forefront. It is an ongoing process to develop ourselves as a leader, but unless we take on the leadership challenges presented to us on a daily basis, we cannot become better at it.”

      We first asked people in the early 1980s to tell us what they did when they were at their “personal best” in leading others, and we continue to ask this question of people around the world. After analyzing thousands of these leadership experiences, we discovered, and continue to find, that regardless of the times or settings, individuals who guide others along pioneering journeys follow surprisingly similar paths. Although each experience was unique in its individual expression, there were clearly identifiable behaviors and actions that made a difference. When making extraordinary things happen in organizations, leaders engage in what we call The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®:

      ▶ Model the Way

      ▶ Inspire a Shared Vision

      ▶ Challenge the Process

      ▶ Enable Others to Act

      ▶ Encourage the Heart

      These practices are not the private purview of the people we studied. Nor do they belong to a few select shining stars. Leadership is not about personality. It's about behavior. The Five Practices are available to anyone who accepts the leadership challenge – the challenge of taking people and organizations to places they have never been before. It is the challenge of moving beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary.

      The Five Practices framework is not an accident of a special moment in history. It has passed the test of time. While the context of leadership has changed dramatically over the years, the content of leadership has not changed much at all. The fundamental behaviors and actions of leaders have remained essentially the same, and they are as relevant today as they were when we began our study of exemplary leadership. The truth of each individual Personal-Best Leadership Experience, multiplied thousands of times, and substantiated empirically by millions of respondents and hundreds of scholars, establishes The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership as an “operating system” for leaders everywhere.

      In the remainder of this chapter, we introduce each of The Five Practices and provide brief examples that demonstrate how leaders, just like Brian and Anna, across a variety of circumstances use them to make extraordinary things happen. When you explore The Five Practices in depth in Chapters Three through Twelve, you'll find scores of illustrations from the real-life experiences of people who have taken the leadership challenge.

      Model the Way

      Titles are granted, but it's your behavior that earns you respect. When Terry Callahan asks, “How can I help you?” he means it. One example was while vice president for Miller Valentine Group, a real estate solution provider, they needed to make an important community grand-opening event happen in record time and it required an “all hands on deck” effort. What surprised the team the most was when Terry removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and literally got down and dirty as he started mulching the landscape. “Terry taught me that leadership is not about titles and ranks,” said one of his direct reports, “but about personal responsibility and setting a positive example.”5

      This sentiment reverberated across all the cases we collected. “At the end of the day,” Toni Lejano, human resources manager at Cisco, recalled from her Personal-Best Leadership Experience, “leadership is all about how you behave that makes

4

More information about the myths that keep people from fully developing as leaders can be found in J. M. Kouzes and B. Z. Posner, Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader (San Francisco: The Leadership Challenge – A Wiley Brand, 2016).

5

We are grateful to Valarie Willis for providing this example.