The Leadership Challenge Workbook, 4th Edition

Acknowledgments

IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THIS WORKBOOK we quoted Don Bennett, the first amputee to climb Mount Rainier, responding to our question “How did you make it to the top?” Now we think of Don's response when we asked about the most important lesson he learned. His answer was “You can't do it alone.”

Sometimes writing a book seems like climbing a mountain, and it really is true that without the team of people climbing alongside us or helping out at base camp, we'd never have made it. In fact, this project began as a result of questions from the readers of our books and from participants in The Leadership Challenge® Workshop. “How do we put this into practice?” they persistently ask. We owe the most gratitude to them for their constant supply of new ideas and for continually requesting materials they can use.

We've always thought of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® as both a process for planning change and a set of skills for guiding change. To help people use The Five Practices as a guide to change, we initially wrote a ten‐page list of probing questions that walked people step by step through a real‐life initiative. That initial list of questions was then transformed into “The Next Personal‐Best Planner” by our colleagues at The Tom Peters Company: Homi Eshaghi, Lynne Parode, Christy Tonge, and Cathy Weselby. When it came time to completely revise the original text and create The Leadership Challenge Workbook in 2003, we were blessed with the talents of Janis ...