Connecting leadership attributes to desired results in business.

"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes." – Peter Druker

"Results-Based Leadership makes one of the most important statements about the very meaning and importance of leadership." – Warren Bennis

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.

Managing for results

The effective business focuses on opportunities, rather than problems. Every successful business requires a goal and spirit all its own. As a results-driven executive decision-maker, you must must analyze systemically your business results areas, the interferences to draw upon, and the strategies to plan and implement to move your enterprise forward.

The only place where meaningful management results can be won is the outside world. Managing for results is expansion of Management by Objectives (MBO) into the marketplace. It is the theory and practice of how to produce results on the outside, in the market and economy.

To achieve these results, you should develop a solid, sound, customer-focused, and entrepreneurial strategy, aimed at market leadership, based on innovation, and tightly focused on decisive opportunities.

Organizational capability approach

An organizational capability approach nurtures three of the most critical factors essential to achieve superior, sustainable results:

strategic focus,
organizational alignment,
operating discipline.

Conversely, taking action to achieve strategic focus, organizational alignment, and operating discipline develops capability thinking.

Managerial leadership: 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 leadership:

Energy. Leaders with tremendous personal energy.
Energize. Those who energize teams, and don't intimidate them.
Edge. Someone with a competitive edge and a will to win.
Execution. Those leaders who have a track record of getting results.

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What is results-based leadership?

Êesults-based leadership has relentless emphasis on results. It's simple equation:

Effective leadership = attributes × 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.

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 theó are direct, focused, and consistent.

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, to using results as the standard filters who should enter an organization and how they should be trained.

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.

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