Meet the Authors Behind The Leadership Challenge

Between 1981 and 1982, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner began exploring the question, “What do leaders do while operating at their personal best?” Asking this question led to a wave of groundbreaking research along with Jim and Barry’s first leadership workshop in 1984. The publication of their book, The Leadership Challenge, followed next in 1987. A year later, Jim and Barry launched the first edition of the LPI^®: Leadership Practices Inventory^® assessment.

Since then, Jim and Barry have changed the way organizations and individuals discuss and approach leadership. Through 5 million collected surveys and hundreds of studies, Jim and Barry proved that leadership is everyone’s business—it’s a set of skills and behaviors that everyone can teach, learn, and practice. To discover the logic, data, and studies behind The Leadership Challenge, explore the research below.