A Leader's Legacy / Edition 1

by James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner

Overview

Uncover the latest developments in leadership development and coaching with insights from two of the most respected voices on the subject

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 questions of leadership and legacy. In 22 stand-alone chapters, Kouzes and Posner examine the critical questions all leaders must ask themselves before they can 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—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 that matters, 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.

In the book, you’ll find:

• A free-flowing discussion of leadership topics and lessons
• Incisive explorations of ambiguous issues and paradoxes that have bedeviled leaders for generations
• Concise and to-the-point essays representing new approaches to familiar themes, new stories, and new experiences

A Leader’s Legacy is an indispensable resource for managers, executives, and other business leaders looking for insightful new ways to push their leadership development further than they ever thought possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780787982966
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	08/18/2006
Series:	J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner , #101
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	810,037
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JIM KOUZES is an Executive Fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.

BARRY POSNER is dean of the Leavey School of Business and professor of leadership at Santa Clara University.

Together, they are the authors of the award-winning and bestselling book The Leadership Challenge, as well as the widely used Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI).

Read an Excerpt

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part one Significance 9

1 Leaders Serve and Sacrifice 12

2 The Best Leaders Are Teachers 20

3 We All Need Loving Critics 27

4 You Are the Most Important Leader in Your Organization 33

5 No One Likes to Be an Assumption 40

Part two Relationships 47

6 Leadership Is Personal 50

7 Leaders Should Want to Be Liked 56

8 When You Don’t See Eye to Eye, Seek to Understand 62

9 You Can’t Take Trust for Granted 71

10 Let Your People Go 79

Part three Aspirations 89

11 Lead from the Inside Out 92

12 Forward-Looking Is a Leadership Prerequisite 99

13 It’s Not Just the Leader’s Vision 107

14 Liberate the Leader in Everyone 114

15 Leaders Are Followers, Too! 122

Part four Courage 131

16 There’s Courage in All of Us 134

17 You Can’t Plan to Be Courageous, But You Can Choose It 141

18 It Takes Courage to Make a Life 148

19 The Courage to Be Human 155

20 Failure Is Always an Option 163

21 No Money-Back Guarantee 170

Afterword: The Legacy You Leave Is the Life You Lead 177

Notes 183

Acknowledgments 187

About the Authors 191

Index 195

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner have done it again! In clear, concise essays filled with wisdom and insight, they set the standard of what leaders need to be in order to excel in the twenty-first century, starting with the legacy that they want to leave behind. A Leader's Legacy is a must-read, not just for those at the top of organizations but for anyone at any level who aspires to be a leader."
—Bill George, former chairman and CEO, Medtronic; author, Authentic Leadership

"This superb book defies conventional wisdom in favor of being truly wise. In chapters such as ‘Leaders Should Want to Be Liked’ and ‘Failure Is Always an Option,’ Kouzes and Posner portray leaders on a human scale, opening leadership to anyone who is willing to be fully human. That, of course, is a challenge! And yet the style of this book—with its stories of well-grounded leaders and its engaging conversational prose—encourages the reader to live into and up to that challenge. A Leader's Legacy will surely become key to the literary legacy that its authors have been leaving in their wake over the past twenty-five years."
—Parker J. Palmer, author, The Courage to Teach, A Hidden Wholeness, and Let Your Life Speak

"In their new book, Kouzes and Posner provide a badly needed supplement to all those other books on leadership. First, they don’t just say that everyone can be a leader—that oft-repeated bromide is little more than a cliché now. They demonstrate (with good examples) how true and important the idea is. And second (again with effective examples) they make ‘leadership’ something that will interest not just ‘organizational’ types but anyone who hopes to make a difference in the world."
—William Bridges, author, Transitions and Managing Transition

"A Leader’s Legacy is an indispensable daily reference for leaders at every level of every enterprise. Legacy is a gift to leaders of today, to leaders of the future."
—Frances Hesselbein, chairman, Leader to Leader Institute

Editorial Reviews

" …an often emotional but compelling book…offers a thoughtful and reassuring perspective that any leader or aspiring leader can use…" (Business Executive, June 2007)

From the Publisher