Biography

Jim Kouzes is chairman emeritus of the Tom Peters Company, a professional services firm which specializes in leadership development. He's also an executive fellow in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.

Barry Posner is Dean of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Jim and Barry co-authored The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations, which is now in its third edition (2002) with over one million copies in print. The Leadership Challenge, available in eleven languages, has been a selection of the Macmillan Executive Book Club and the Fortune Book Club. It's the winner of the 1989 James A. Hamilton Hospital Administrators' Book, the 1995-96 Critics' Choice Award, and was a BusinessWeek bestseller in 2001. Jim and Barry have also co-authored Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It, which was chosen by Industry Week as one of the ten best management books of 1993. Encouraging the Heart and The Leadership Challenge Planner were released in 1999. Based on solid research involving over 70,000 surveys, 1,000 written case studies, and 100 in-depth interviews, these books describe the leadership principles and practices that generate high performance in individuals and organizations.