Encouraging the Heart: Igniting Purpose and Providing Meaningful Recognition (2nd Edition)

In the newly revised second edition of Encouraging the Heart, renowned leadership experts and bestselling authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner deliver an incisive and practical playbook for leaders who want to inspire their followers to achieve extraordinary things. They've packed the book with real-world examples, practical ideas, and eye-opening advice drawn from over four decades of work with countless business leaders.

Encouraging the Heart is not a book about incentive systems or reward programs. It goes beyond those things to discuss universal leadership principles that will help elevate your people to new levels of productivity, engagement, and performance. It's a hands-on roadmap containing behaviors, principles, practices, evidence, and examples that will form the foundation of a repeatable process you can put into place at your own organization. Inside the book you'll find strategies for setting clear standards aligned with your organization's purpose; paying attention to exemplary actions and telling memorable stories that motivate action and enact change; noticing exemplars of values and standards and publicly praising them with personalized feedback and appreciation that encourages others to live up to their example; and setting a personal example of meaningful ways to recognize others and celebrate values and victories.

© 2025 Ascent Audio (Audiobook): 9781663754400

Release date

Audiobook: July 8, 2025