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50 TOP EXECUTIVE COACHES
Barry Posner
The Leader’s Passion
Barry Posner is Dean of the Leavey School of Business at
Santa Clara University, also serving as a Professor of
Leadership at that university. He has also served as Asso-
ciate Dean with responsibility for leading the School ’s
MBA programs and as Managing Partner of the Executive
Development Center. He has received the Dean’s
Award
for Exemplary Service, the President ’s Distinguished
Faculty Award, the School ’s Extraordinary Faculty
Award, and several outstanding teaching and leadership
honors. In 2001, he was one of the recipients of the McFeely Award, given to
the nation’s top management and leadership educators. Barry is the coauthor
(with Jim Kouzes) of the award-winning and best-selling leadership book, The
Leadership Challenge.
Barry can be reached or by e-mail at bposner@scu.edu
or via the Internet at www.leadershipchallenge.com.
H
ow can I be a leader? How can I be a better leader than I am today?
These are the sorts of questions I’m typically asked by students,
alumni, and executives from both nonprofit and corporate enterprises. Nei-
ther the questions, nor often the answers, vary much depending upon the
background of the questioner (i.e., age, education, organizational level, years
of experience, gender, and so on) nor the characteristics of their organiza-
tional setting (i.e., large or small, public or private, marginal or exceptional
performance). Not that these matters are insignificant, because they form an
important context in which leadership emerges and is exercised,
but essen-
tially because these aren’t the bases from which leadership begins.
Leadership begins with determining what you care about, and what you
care deeply about. Some refer to this as passion, and others call it vocation or
calling. Regardless of terminology, the important point is that leadership de-
velopment is an inside-out process of development, a bringing forth of talents,
energies, motives, determination, and the perseverance necessary to make
something happen. Indeed, another critical point is working out how we’ll de-
termine “success.” Another way of saying this is “Who and for what purpose
are you trying to serve?” Clarifying this issue goes a long ways toward deter-
mining both passion and ego, for in the end leadership is selflessness, and car-
ing more about another person (or cause) than one cares about oneself.
It’s in this same vein that Jim Kouzes and I have written about how lead-
ers are in love: “Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the
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