The leadership challenge
The leadership challenge certainly focuses on behaviors, principles, and practices, but this skill-centered approach to leadership does not minimize the importance of leader’s authenticity and relational connection with his or her followers. In considering each of the five practices, Kouzes and Posner highlight the relational elements needed for implementation.
In order to model the way, for example, one must be able to align practices to values in a way that ignites the aspirations of the other team members. In order to share aspirations, one must know other people well enough to intuitively understand what will inspire and motivate them to action. In challenging the process, the only way to effectively lead people to willfully embrace temporary discomfort is through established credibility that can only exist when there is a relational history behind it.