James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, A Leader’s Legacy. Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Referenced in: Empowering Leadership
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is an excellent continuation of Kouzes and Posner’s contributions to the field of transformational and empowering. The authors offer warm reassurance that anyone who is truly willing can make a difference in others. Many examples are sprinkled throughout the book of ordinary people – teachers, coaches, mentors, employees, executives – who in their truly human capacity leave behind a “legacy” by how they invest themselves in the success of others. Written in a very engaging style, they offer surprise insights such as “Leaders should want to be liked.” Readers come away with a mother lode of leadership gems on treating people with respect, having life-changing impact in others, showing appreciation, identifying with others’ deepest yearnings and fears, fighting for what one believes in face of stern resistance, etc. Echoes and expands upon insights from their other books, such as “We will work harder and more effectively for people we like. And we will like them in direct proportion to how they make us feel.” (57)
One may be interested in Kouzes and Posner’s related volumes:
- Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It: Why People Demand It
- Strengthening Credibility: A Leader’s Workbook
- The Truth About Leadership
- The Leadership Challenge
- Christian Reflections on the Leadership Challenge
From the Publisher
In this provocative book, leadership experts and authors of the best-selling The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner take on a unique challenge and explore the question of leadership and legacy. Kouzes and Posner examine in twenty-two chapters the critical questions all leaders must ask themselves in order to leave a lasting impact. These powerful essays are grouped into four categories: Significance, Relationships, Aspirations, and Courage. In each essay the authors consider a thorny and often ambiguous issue with which today’s leaders must grapple issues – such as how leaders serve and sacrifice, why leaders need loving critics, why leaders should want to be liked, why leaders can’t take trust for granted, why it’s not just the leader’s vision, why failure is always an option, why it takes courage to “make a life,” how to liberate the leader in everyone, and ultimately, how the legacy you leave is the life you lead.
About the Authors
James M. Kouzes is chairman emeritus of the Tom Peters Company and an executive fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. Barry Z. Posner is dean of the Leavey School of Business and professor of leadership at Santa Clara University.
Kouzes and Posner are the coauthors of The Leadership Challenge, Credibility, and The Leadership Challenge Planner. They also developed the highly acclaimed Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) and LPIOnline.com, 360-degree assessment tools based on the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership.
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