In 1987, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner were scheduled to present about leadership at a two-day conference following Tom Peters—a leading management guru at the time. Academics at Santa Clara University, Kouzes and Posner decided to focus on individual leadership skills and the challenges that take place to “make extraordinary things happen.”
Following the presentation, they published The Leadership Challenge—a blockbuster business book that has sold over two million copies. On the 25th anniversary of its publication, they released the fifth edition of the book.
In 2010, Kouzes and Posner published another book entitled The Truth About Leadership: The No-Fads, Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know. As they point out, the context of leadership has changed dramatically since they first asked people in the early 1980s to describe their personal best leadership experiences and their most admired leaders.
However, as the context of leadership has changed, the content of leadership has not changed much at all. The fundamental behaviors, actions, and practices of leaders have remained essentially the same since Kouzes and Posner first began researching and writing about leadership nearly four decades ago.
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