Credibility

August 8, 2011
This timely new edition of Kouzes and Posner's 1993 text incorporates research that reflects the increasing importance of credibility for effective leadership. The authors offer strategies to enhance credibility by reaffirming values and not promising results that can't be delivered, arguing that credibility and loyalty are inextricably linked. In their view, a leader lacking credibility suffers from diminished productivity and a lack of loyalty, creating constituents indifferent to outcomes and low morale. While Kouzes and Posner (The Leadership Challenge) offer useful advice for would-be leaders, as well as for a general business audience, they tend to repeat themselves and present an idealized view of the workplace. They offer very little advice about how to approach superiors who may not appreciate forthrightness, and in fact, the book's best advice is for leaders who already have the power to shape corporate culture. That said, the book is easy to follow and offers actionable advice, even if readers grow frustrated with its rose-tinted glasses.

January 4, 1993
Behavioral savants Kouzes and Posner ( The Leadership Challenge ) here provide philosophical and practical guidance for business executives at a time when computers, consultants, coproduction and ever-growing employee empowerment leave less for managers to do. Unsurprisingly, the authors place honesty, competence and a talent to inspire (``a set of values that can be learned'') at the core of effective leadership. From a penetrating survey of business methods and employee attitudes worldwide, Kouzes and Posner pinpoint future trends--e.g., more authority for customer contact personnel--in a logical, integrated and symbiotic organizational plan to replace a now-outdated omnipotent-boss system. Unfortunately, a hucksterish title and an introductory essay on ``credibility'' do a disservice to this broad and serious work's potential readership. 50,000 first printing; Executive Program book club selection; author tour.