The Leadership Challenge. Posner Barry Z.

achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.

      To effectively Model the Way, you must first be clear about your own guiding principles. You must clarify values by finding your voice. When you understand who you are and what your values are, then you can give voice to those values. As Alan Spiegelman, wealth management advisor with Northwestern Mutual, explained: “Before you can be a leader of others, you need to know clearly who you are and what your core values are. Once you know that, then you can give your voice to those values and feel comfortable sharing them with others.”

      Arpana Tiwari, senior manager with one of the world's largest e-commerce retailers, found that “the more I spoke with others about my values, the clearer they became for me.” She realized, however, that her values weren't the only ones that mattered. Everyone on the team has principles that guide their actions and, as a leader, you must affirm the shared values of the group. This requires getting everyone involved in creating the values. Doing so, Arpana observed, “makes it relatively easy to model the values that everyone has agreed to.” Another benefit she realized was that “it is also less difficult to confront people when they make decisions that are not aligned. When a value is violated, leaders have to do or say something or they run the risk of sending a message that this is not important.” Therefore, leaders must set the example. Deeds are far more important than words when constituents want to determine how serious leaders really are about what they say. Words and deeds must be consistent.

      Inspire a Shared Vision

      People describe their Personal-Best Leadership Experiences as times when they imagined an exciting, highly attractive future for their organizations. They had visions and dreams of what could be. They had absolute and total personal faith in their dreams, and they were confident in their abilities to make those extraordinary things happen. Every organization, every social movement, begins with a vision. It is the force that creates the future.

      Leaders envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities. You need to have an appreciation of the past and a clear image of what the results should look like even before starting any project, much as an architect draws a blueprint or an engineer builds a model. As Ajay Aggrawal, information technology (IT) project manager with Oracle, said, “You have to connect to what's meaningful to others and create the belief that people can achieve something grand. Otherwise, people may fail to see how their work is meaningful and their contributions fit into the big picture.”

      You can't command commitment; you have to inspire it. You have to enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations. Stephanie Capron, Ritzman Pharmacies vice president of human resources, told us how this family business, with over twenty-five locations, asked people within each location and every department to create a vision board of what they saw the future looking like, and then brought all of these together to create a shared vision (and new brand). “We painted a big picture,” she said, “and got everyone to see that picture so they could understand what great service looked and felt like, and their part in it.”6 Too many people think that the leader's job is to come up with the vision when the reality is that people, like those at Ritzman Pharmacies, want to be involved in the process. This grassroots approach is much more effective than preaching one person's perspective.

      In these times of rapid change and uncertainty, people want to follow those who can see beyond today's difficulties and imagine a brighter tomorrow. As Oliver Vivell, senior director, corporate development at SAP, points out, “Others have to see themselves as part of that vision and as able to contribute in order to embrace the vision and make it their own.” 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 express your enthusiasm and excitement for the vision, you ignite that same passion in others. As Amy Matson Drohan, ON24's senior customer success manager, reflected on her Personal-Best Leadership Experience, she observed that: “You can't proselytize a vision that you don't full-heartedly believe.” Ultimately, she said, “The leader's excitement shines through and convinces the team that the vision is worthy of their time and support.”

      Challenge the Process

      Challenge is the crucible for greatness. Every single personal-best leadership case involved a change from the status quo. Not one person achieved a personal best by keeping things the same. Regardless of the specifics, they all involved overcoming adversity and embracing opportunities to grow, innovate, and improve.

      Leaders are pioneers willing to step out into the unknown. However, leaders aren't the only creators or originators of new products, services, or processes. Innovation comes more from listening than from telling, and from constantly looking outside of yourself and your organization for new and innovative products, processes, and services. You need to search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and by looking outward for innovative ways to improve.

      Leaders don't sit idly by waiting for fate to smile upon them; they venture out. Taking risks was what Srinath Thurthahalli Nagaraj recalled about his personal-best (and first) leadership experience in India with Flextronics. “When things did not work as expected,” Srinath explained, “we kept on experimenting and challenging one another's ideas. You have to make room for failure and more importantly the opportunity to learn from failure.” By making something happen, Srinath was able to move the project forward.

      Because innovation and change involve experimenting and taking risks, your main contribution will be to create a climate for experimentation, the recognition of good ideas, the support of those ideas, and the willingness to challenge the system. One way of dealing with the potential risks and failures of experimentation is by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience. Pierfrancesco Ronzi, as the London-based engagement manager with McKinsey and Company, recalled how successfully turning around the credit process for a banking client in North Africa meant breaking the project down into parts so that they could find a place to start, determine what would work, and see how they could learn in the process of moving forward. “Showing them that we were able to make something happen,” he said, “was a significant boost to their confidence in the project and their willingness to stay involved.”

      There's a strong correlation between the process of learning and the approach leaders take to making extraordinary things happen. Leaders are always learning from their errors and failures. Life is the leader's laboratory, and exemplary leaders use it to conduct as many experiments as possible. Kinjal Shah, senior manager at Quisk, told us how his personal best “taught me a lot. I stumbled at places, many times, and got up, dusted myself off, learned from it and tried to do better the next time around. I learned a lot, and the experience definitely made me a better leader.”

      Enable Others to Act

      Grand dreams don't become significant realities through the actions of a single person. Achieving greatness requires a team effort. It requires solid trust and enduring relationships. It requires group collaboration and individual accountability, which begins, as Sushma Bhope, co-founder of Stealth Technology Startup, appreciated, “by empowering those around you.” She concluded, just as many others had when reviewing their personal-best experiences, that “no one could have this done this alone. It was essential to be open to all ideas and to give everyone a voice in the decision-making process. The one guiding principle on the project was that the team was larger than any individual on the team.”

      Leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships. You have to engage all those who must make the project work – and in some way, all who must live with the results. General Wendy Masiello, director of the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency, articulated the importance of being “one team, one voice” to over 600 leaders at their World Wide Training Conference. To make this point, she asked everyone who had contracts with Lockheed Martin to stand. A third of the room stood. She said, “Look around the room at the people you need to team with during this conference. While in sessions sit together, meet together, and share your experiences and expertise.” She then asked those to stand who worked with Boeing, and then with Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and the like. Each time, she spoke

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We are grateful to Valarie Willis for providing this example.