Leadership in Higher Education Practices That Make a Difference

The authors of the classic bestseller The Leadership Challenge bring their expertise to higher education, offering five practices that can make any college or university leader into an exemplary leader. 

Drawing on the same pioneering research that formed the foundation of their classic bestseller The Leadership Challenge (over 2.7 million copies sold), James Kouzes and Barry Posner offer a set of leadership skills and practices that will make a significant difference in every area of higher education—faculty, administration, library services, career counseling, auxiliary services, campus safety, and more. It’s about the behaviors that leaders, regardless of their position, use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, segments into solidarity, and risks into rewards. 

Kouzes and Posner tell the leadership story from the inside and move outward, describing it first as a personal journey and then as mobilizing others to want to do things they have never done before. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership is the operating system for this adventure. Leadership in Higher Education explains the fundamental principles that support these practices and provides case examples of people in higher education who demonstrate each one. 

A core theme that weaves its way through all the chapters is that, whether it’s one to one or one to many, leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. We need leaders who can unite us and ignite us. This book lights the way.

James M. Kouzes is the Dean's Executive Fellow of Leadership and Barry Z. Posner is the Accolti Endowed Professor of Leadership at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. They are the coauthors of the award-winning and bestselling book The Leadership Challenge and more than a dozen other leadership books. Kouzes founded the Center for Human Services Development at San José State University and directed the Executive Development Center at Santa Clara University. Posner has been associate dean for graduate programs, managing partner for executive education, and dean for twelve years.