Leadership
Practices
Inventory (LPI)
The Leadership Practices Inventory
(LPI)
5 practices and commitments associated with LPI:
– Challenging the process
– Inspiring a shared vision
– Enabling others to act
– Modeling the way
– Encouraging the heart
Practice 1: Challenging the Process
– Search for opportunities to change the status quo and
improve an organization.
– Experiment and take risks.
– Continually learn from mistakes and failures.
Practice 2: Inspiring a Shared Vision
– Believe you can make a difference.
– Envision the future.
– Be enthusiastic and passionate about your vision.
– Create an ideal and unique image of what the
organization can become.
– Enlist others in your dreams.
Practice 3: Enabling Others to Act
– Foster collaboration and build spirited
teams.
– Actively involve others.
– Share power and provide choice.
– Promote shared goals.
– Cultivate accountability and ownership
for achievements.
– Strive to create an atmosphere of
trust, respect, and human dignity.
Practice 4: Modeling the Way
– Establish principles concerning the way people
should be treated and the way goals should be
pursued.
– Create standards of excellence and set an example
for others to follow.
‒ Set interim goals so that people can achieve small
wins as they work toward larger objectives.
– Try to eliminate or reduce bureaucracy when it
interferes with getting work done.
Practice 5: Encouraging the Heart
– Recognize contributions that
individuals make (thank-you notes,
smiles, awards, public praise).
– Visibly celebrate team
accomplishments.
– Make people feel like heroes.
The LPI
The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), Self
Instrument (3rd Edition)
• 30-item self-test developed by Jim Kouzes and Barry
Posner
• Approaches leadership as a measurable, learnable,
and teachable set of behaviors
The LPI
1. Score yourself using the Leadership Practices
Inventory (LPI) Self Instrument.
2. Use scale of 1-10 explained on Inventory.
3. Transfer your scores to the Response Sheet. The
scores in each column represent your responses to
six statements about each of the five leadership
practices.
4. The score for each practice can range from a high of
60 to a low of 6.
5. Your scores are private and will remain so unless
you wish to share them.
Scoring
•
•
•
•
•
Column 1: Modeling the Way
Column 2: Inspiring a Vision
Column 3: Challenging the Process
Column 4: Enabling Others to Act
Column 5: Encourage the Heart
GROUP ACTIVITY
• Choose a leadership practice.
• Brainstorm strategies for developing the
practice.
• Present to the large group.
Challenging the Process
• Take risks and honor others who do.
• Question the way things are done and suggest new
systems and procedures.
• Treat each assignment as a chance to make things
change for the better in an organization.
• Find something broken and fix it.
Inspiring a Shared Vision
• Know others- enlist their support
by appealing to their values,
interests, hopes and dreams.
• Orient your thinking to the future.
• Hold an image of the end result.
• Create a succinct statement or
presentation about what you are
trying to accomplish.
Enabling Others to Act
• Always say “we.”
• Delegate to others and help them
succeed.
• Involve people in planning and
problem solving.
• Build up others.
• Create a climate of trust.
• Share information and power.
• Focus on gains rather than losses.
Modeling the Way
• Lead others where you are also
willing to go.
• Know your own basic set of values
and talk to people about them.
• Do what you say you are going to do.
• Walk the halls.
• Encourage ethical behavior.
• Establish norms about hard work
and caring.
• Decrease job stress and tension.
Encouraging the Heart
• Say “thank you.”
• Celebrate team
accomplishments.
• Install a systematic process to
reward performance.
• Be creative about rewards.
• Make recognition public.
• Look for people doing
something right.
Leading From Within
• It takes courage to examine one’s inner life.
• LPI is one way to expand self-examination and
growth.
• The journey is downward and inward.
To manage yourself,
se your head;
to manage others, use your
heart."
-African Proverb