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salespeople, physicians, or priests; whether business executives, military officers, politicians, or civic leaders—researchers typically evaluate them on their perceived trustworthiness, expertise, and dynamism. The more highly people are rated on these three dimensions the more credible they are perceived as sources of information.⁵

Notice how remarkably similar these three characteristics are to the essential qualities people want from their leaders—honest, competent, and inspiring—three of the top four items selected in our surveys. Link the theory to this data, and the striking conclusion is that people want to follow leaders who, more than anything, are credible. Credibility is the foundation of leadership. People must be able, above all else, to believe in their leaders. To willingly follow them, people must believe that the leaders' word can be trusted, that they are personally passionate and enthusiastic about the work, and that they have the knowledge and skill to lead.⁶

      If you are going to ask others to follow you to some uncertain future, and if the journey is going to require hardships and possibly sacrifices, then it is imperative that people believe in you. People must be able to believe that your words can be trusted, that you will do what you say, that you are personally excited and enthusiastic about the direction in which the group is headed, and that you have the knowledge and skills to lead.

      This all leads to the First Law of Leadership: If people don't believe in the messenger, they won't believe the message.

The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership

      So what is it that leaders do to build and sustain credibility? What do they do that makes others see them as capable and trustworthy leaders? What are the behaviors that people exhibit that engage and mobilize others to want to follow? What are people actually doing when they are leading and making extraordinary things happen?

To answer these questions, we have been asking people since the early 1980s to tell us what they did when they were at their “personal best” as leaders. We continue to ask this question in our studies and workshops around the world. We have collected thousands of Personal-Best Leadership Experiences—stories about times when individuals report how they excelled at leading, when they were operating at peak performance—from across a wide variety of settings, nationalities, organizations, levels, ages, genders, educational backgrounds, and the like. We've interviewed students in universities, individual contributors at work, middle managers in large and small companies, volunteers in the community, and executives in the C-suite about times when they excelled at leading—when they were doing their best as leaders.

      Before finding out what others said, reflect for a moment on something that you would consider your Personal-Best Leadership Experience. This experience could be a time when you emerged as the informal leader, or it could be a time when you were appointed to take on the lead role in a new project. It could be in any functional area, in any type of organization, in a staff or line role. The experience does not need to be in your current organization. It could be in a prior job, a club, a community volunteer setting, a professional organization, a school, a team, a congregation, or even a family setting. It could be a project to improve a product or service, an initiative to bring about a change in your neighborhood, the turnaround of a poorly performing team, the start-up of a new business, jumping in during a crisis, or any other kind of challenge that required leadership.

When we initially analyzed the themes in the thousands of personal-best stories we had collected, two meta-lessons emerged and continue to be front and center. The first lesson we learned is that everyone has a story to tell. Regardless of whom we ask, people are able to identify a time when they did their best as a leader. The specifics of the personal-best stories varied from person to person because the individuals responding to the Personal-Best Leadership Experience Questionnaire were different from one another along a myriad of factors. Despite any individual differences, settings, and circumstances, the second lesson we learned is that the actions and behaviors of leaders when at their best are more similar than they are different. There is a set of common behaviors and actions that people demonstrate when they operate at their personal-best as leaders. These behaviors are universal, and they have stood the test of time and place.⁷ Moreover, hundreds of independent scholars have validated this framework in their own studies investigating the central role leadership plays in personal well-being, organizational productivity, and effectiveness.⁸ The evidence is clear: exemplary leadership is found in every corner of the globe, every sector of society, every community, every organization, and every type of individual.

We've grouped these behaviors into a leadership operating system that we call The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership.⁹ When making extraordinary things happen, leaders:

       Model the Way

       Inspire a Shared Vision

       Challenge the Process

       Enable Others to Act

       Encourage the Heart

      Let's take a brief look now at each of The Five Practices. We will explore them more completely in Chapters 2 through 6. In those chapters you will find numerous stories and examples about how people much like you have applied them in their settings. We'll also provide several practical ideas about how you can learn to be the best leader you can be.

Model the Way Titles are granted, but it's your behavior that earns you respect. This sentiment was expressed in everyone's personal-best case, as represented by such comments as “I couldn't tell anyone what to do, I had to show them,” “I had to be a role model for the behavior I wanted from others,” and “I had to be clear about my personal values and then make sure that I walked the talk.” Exemplary leaders know that if they want to earn the respect of the people around them and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others. Exemplary leaders Model the Way.

      To effectively model the way, you first must be clear about your guiding principles. You must clarify values by finding your voice. When you understand who you are and the values you hold dear, then you can speak authentically about the beliefs that you want to guide your decisions and actions. But your values aren't the only values that matter. Leaders don't speak just for themselves. They also speak for the group, and in every team, organization, and community, there are others who also feel strongly about matters of principle. As a leader, you also must help identify and affirm the shared values of the group you are working with. Without an agreed-on and collective understanding of what is right and what is wrong, then anything goes, and there are neither practical nor ethical standards for people to follow.

      When it comes to determining how serious leaders are about what they say, however, a leader's actions are far more important than their words. People listen to the talk, and then they watch the walk. Words and actions must be consistent for leaders to be believed, so exemplary leaders set the example by aligning actions with shared values. The best way that you prove that something is important is by doing it yourself. Through daily actions, leaders demonstrate their deep commitment to their beliefs and to the shared values of the groups they are part of.

Inspire a Shared Vision People describe their Personal-Best Leadership Experiences as times when they imagined exciting and meaningful futures for themselves and others. They reported actions such as: “I told the team that we need everyone's commitment to make our vision a reality, to reach our dreams and make them happen,” “The more I imagined what was possible, the more clearly I could describe

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