3 Lessons on Leadership from Jim Kouzes, Acclaimed Leadership Author, Speaker and Researcher
1. Your actions matter
Greatly influenced by JFK, during whose Inauguration he served in the Honor Guard with a dozen other Eagle Scouts, Jim Kouzes took to heart the president's famous call to action: "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" and joined the Peace Corps after college.
This lesson- that the actions of one person can make a difference- is the first of three most important leadership lessons Jim highlighted in his conversation with Kate Ebner last Monday. This lesson gets at the fundamental heart of leadership: to lead, one must believe that his or her actions can influence other people, organizations, and the world.
2. Through practice, anyone can lead
The second lesson is that through practice, any person can learn to be a leader. As Jim put it, "Leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It's not just about what the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies do or the presidents of countries or leaders on the covers of magazines. It's what anyone who wants to take someone to a place they've never been before does."Jim and his long-time, colleague, co-author and business partner, Barry Posner, conceptualize leadership not as an innate capability, but as a set of skills that are learnable by everyone with desire to lead and will to practice. Jim emphasized that practice and reflection are crucial to developing one's leadership skills and noted that although studies have shown those who participate in leadership development activities are ranked higher in leadership qualities than their peers, leadership is not something you can cultivate in a 2-day seminar and then have for the rest of your life. It is a daily practice.
3. Vision is key
Jim's third lesson highlighted the importance of vision: imagine that you are holding one piece of a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. You and your colleagues each have a piece but you've misplaced the box with the final picture on the front. "Great leaders can communicate what the puzzle will look like even if they only hold a few of the pieces. Without the vision, people are left holding a piece without an idea of where it belongs in the big picture. Leaders tell their team how their pieces fit into the puzzle and what the puzzle will look like when it is constructed." This is the power of a leader with vision, which is defined as a detailed picture of a desired future that inspires those around a leader. It is related to the forward-thinking quality that research shows is so important in admired leaders. "People cannot articulate where they're headed unless they hear their leaders talk about a vision of the future in detail, what it will be like, the kinds of things people will be doing when they're there, how they will feel in that future."
To learn more about leadership and hear one of Jim's visioning exercises, listen to the full episode here or download the iTunes podcast.