Marshall Goldsmith Library

"Leadership is a relationship. It's a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow."

Leadership / Behavioral Coaching

Jim Kouzes is co-author of the award-winning book, The Leadership Challenge, with over one million copies sold. Jim is not only a highly regarded leadership scholar and experienced executive, but the Wall Street Journal has also cited Jim as one of the 12 most requested "nonuniversity executive-education providers" to U.S. companies. Jim is Chairman Emeritus of the Tom Peters Company, and executive fellow in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.

Coaching Approach:

The most important quality people look for and admire in a leader is personal credibility. Behaviorally, credibility is all about: "Do What You Say You Will Do."

With his partner Barry Posner, Jim Kouzes has developed a simple and intuitive framework for building leadership credibility, which forms the foundation of his coaching. Known as the "Say-Do" model, it is based on three challenges in the developmental effort: the Clarity Challenge; the Unity Challenge; and the Intensity Challenge.

The Clarity Challenge involves engaging leaders in a personal exploration to clarify their personal values, visions and aspirations. The Unity Challenge involves guiding leaders in building a community of shared vision and values by helping leaders achieve consensus and build trust. The Intensity Challenge involves making absolutely certain that the leader is a passionate role model for the organization, someone who demonstrates enthusiasm, hope, self-sacrifice, and a never-say-die attitude.

For Jim, a successful coaching engagement is one in which the leader embraces these challenges and arrives at a place of effortless performance and leadership authenticity. In the end, leadership development is character development.