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Results-Based Leadership Connecting Leadership Attributes to Desired Results |
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By Vadim Kotelnikov, Founder, The first-ever BUSINESS e-COACH for Innovative Leaders, 1000ventures.com
"Results-Based Leadership makes one of the most important statements about the very meaning and importance of leadership" - Warren Bennis
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What is Results-Based Leadership? Results-based leadership has relentless emphasis on results. It's simple equation: Effective leadership = attributes x results. "This equation suggests that leaders must strive for excellence in both terms: that is, they must both demonstrate attributes and achieve results. Each term of the equation multiplies each other; they are not cumulative."1 Why Results-Based Leadership? What is missing in most leadership-related writings and teachings, is the lack of attention to results. Most of them focus on organizational capabilities - such as adaptability, agility, mission-directed, or values-based - or on leadership competencies - such as vision, character, trust, and other exemplary attributes, competencies and capabilities. All well and good, but what is seriously missing is the connection between these critical capabilities and results.1 And this is what results-based leadership is all about: how organizational capabilities and leadership competencies lead to and are connected to desired results. Benefits of Results-Based Leadership By helping leaders at all levels get results, results-based leadership frees productivity from constraints of hierarchy and the limitations of position. Results-based leaders define results by understanding audience and customer needs. They continually ask and answer the question - "What is wanted?" - before they decided how to meet these needs. Employees willingly follow result-based leaders who know both who they are (their own leadership attributes) and where they are going (their targeted results). "Such leaders instill confidence and inspire trust in others because their are direct, focused, and consistent."1 Results-based leadership makes performance measurement easier. "Without a results focus, calibration of leadership becomes extremely difficult. Measuring results helps organizations in many ways, from tracking leaders' individual growth, to comparing leadership effectiveness in similar roles, to clarifying the leader selection process, to structuring leadership development programs. Using results as the standard filters who should enter an organization and how they should be trained."1 Turning Your Leadership Attributes into Outcomes Assess your effectiveness by measuring achievements against goals. To get the job done, focus on both the results required and on what needs to be done to achieve results. Find the right balance and connection between attributes and results to open the way to improved effectiveness and productivity. Delivering Balanced Results through Coaching Coaching brings more humanity into the workplace. "Effective coaching in the workplace delivers achievement, fulfillment and joy from which both the individual and organization benefit."4...More Case in Point: 25 Lessons from Jack Welch While boosting productivity and getting results were of paramount importance to Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, how someone got a team to perform mattered more. He looked for managers who he felt had the four E's of leadership8:
Welch urged other leaders at GE, "Make sure you have the very best people to carry your vision out. Hire those most capable of turning visions into reality - ask questions about how they might go about attacking a particular thorny problem. Promote those people who have the best record of making things happen."...More
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Bibliography:
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"Results-Based Leadership", Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norm Smallwood, 1999
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"Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources", Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, 1977
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"The New Leaders", Daniel Goleman, 2002
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"Effective Coaching", Myles Downey, 2003
