How to Raise Leaders at Every Level to Achieve Extraordinary Results?

Introduction

Leadership is an important concept in every aspect of life, in family, school, organization, company, and society at large. The secret behind the success of any organization lies in its leadership. Extensive research in the field of leadership has given us more than 850 definitions of leadership (Bennis, 1997). All of them have the same factors but in different formulations. After I read many of these definitions, I saw leadership as the ability to guiding a group of people toward achieving a specific goal. While most scholars researched and studied leadership styles, and leadership patterns, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner took the endeavor to study leadership from a different perspective. They decided to approach leadership as a challenge, and viewed the leader who succeeds in facing the challenge and gets extraordinary result is as exemplary. To get a close look into the concept of leadership challenge, Kouzes and Posner started their journey in 1983 by looking for how a leader becomes exemplary and achieves extraordinary results. Their study covered leadership in all sectors and on all the continents of the world. They collected data from different people and mangers during 25 years, and analyzed them. They found that in order for a leader to be exemplary and be able to get extraordinary results, he/she has to be able to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards (Kouzes & Posner, 2002). To get all this done, they outlined a mechanism that they called “The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership”; each practice is achieved by performing two commitments that go along with each practice. These sub-category practices will be the dealt with in some detail in this paper.

Model the way

Model the way is aligned with two commitments .The first one is to find your voice by clarifying your values. A leader must clarify the values that he/she believes in; look for the common values; and have the ability to transfer these values into actions. A clear guiding principle is necessary to follow and to gain the consensus about these principles. These values must be reflected in the leader’s behavior to emphasize credibility which as Kouzes and Posner said claim is the foundation of leadership. Leaders’ clear values help them to practice the second commitment, which is “setting the example by aligning actions with shared values”. Once the leader clarifies his values, he/she has to communicate them to his/her follows via using such means as telling stories, which will help others think about how to bring values alive; giving motivation speeches. However, words are is not enough; a leader has to go first and participate by doing what he asks others to do. Thus, if you want to be a leader, you will have to do what you say you will do, a concept abbreviated