CEO Perspectives on Leadership Behaviors, Individual Leader Characteristics, and Organizational Culture
Part 2 explores the leadership behaviors, individual characteristics, and organizational culture that contribute to performance excellence.
Leadership Behaviors
The article identifies nine interrelated leadership behaviors that are crucial for leading organizational transformation.
Role Model (b1): Leaders must become the change they want to see in their organizations. By setting an example, they build credibility and trust. This behavior is fundamental to transformational leadership, where leaders’ actions align with their vision and desired culture.
Respect (b2): Treating people with respect, regardless of their position, is essential. This includes caring, fair treatment, and giving credit to others. Respect fosters trust, reduces resistance to change, and enhances teamwork.
Collaborative (b3): Collaboration leverages the talents and ideas of a diverse team, resulting in better solutions and strategies. It also increases buy-in and reduces resistance to change. Effective collaboration requires frank two-way communication.
Communication (b4): Effective communication involves systematically conveying the compelling directive and strategy, as well as engaging in frank two-way communication within and between all levels of the organization. Consistent and frequent communication is critical for aligning the organization with its strategic goals.
Persistent (b5): Persistence is necessary for achieving and sustaining performance excellence. Leaders must consistently communicate the vision and strategy, and hold people accountable for making the necessary changes.
Accountable (b6): Holding people accountable is essential for motivating action and achieving excellence. Leaders must set clear expectations and follow through with consequences for non-compliance.
Systems Thinking (b7): Understanding the organization as an interconnected system helps leaders create value for multiple stakeholders. This perspective allows leaders to redesign the system to improve performance and achieve strategic goals.
Personal Involvement (b8): Leaders must spend time with key stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, and customers. Personal involvement helps leaders understand the needs and concerns of stakeholders and build strong relationships.
Personal Learning (b9): Leaders must continuously reflect on their performance and learn from various sources, including experiences, formal education, and feedback from others. Personal learning increases leaders’ credibility and reduces resistance to change.
These behaviors are interconnected and support each other in creating a culture of performance excellence. By adopting these behaviors, leaders can effectively guide their organizations through the transformation process and achieve long-term success.
Individual Leader Characteristics
The article also delves into five key individual leader characteristics that are crucial for leading organizational transformation.
Purpose and Meaning (i1): The CEOs in the study found intrinsic satisfaction in seeing their employees grow and succeed, rather than in financial rewards. They shared anecdotes of how their employees had done great things, developed, and found meaning in their work. This deeper sense of purpose and meaning is a key characteristic of both transformational and spiritual leadership, where leaders help followers find a sense of meaning in their work and lives.
Humble and Confident (i2): The CEOs demonstrated a balance of humility and confidence. While they did not explicitly say they were humble, their actions indicated this combination. Humility allowed them to realize they didn’t have all the answers, which increased collaboration and inquiry. At the same time, their confidence enabled them to advocate for their ideas. This balance of advocacy and inquiry encouraged collaboration and learning.
Integrity (i3): Doing what was right for the stakeholders, combined with consistency and congruence between words, behaviors, and actions, was essential to credibility and influence. Integrity is a key part of being an effective role model that inspires trust, which is essential for teamwork and overcoming resistance to change. Integrity and trust are key elements of both servant and transformational leadership.
Systems Perspective (i4): Nearly all the leaders demonstrated a worldview of organizations as open dynamic systems that can be created and re-created to improve performance for multiple stakeholders. This perspective allowed them to adopt a contingency theory of transformation that best fits the unique situation. Systems thinking is compatible with transformational, servant, and spiritual leadership.
Attitudes and Motivations (i5): The CEOs’ underlying attitudes and motivations influenced many of the concepts in the LTPE framework. A quantitative survey (iWAM) was used to measure the motivational and attitude patterns, revealing that Baldrige leaders differed from other successful leaders on six attitudes and motivations. These attitudes and motivations were linked directly to several of the LTPE components.
These individual leader characteristics, combined with the leadership behaviors and organizational culture, contribute to the successful transformation to performance excellence.
Organizational Culture
The article also explores seven key organizational culture characteristics that are crucial for leading organizational transformation.
Culture Change (c1): Organizational culture change is a fundamental aspect of transformation. CEOs identified it as the ultimate manifestation of organizational transformation. The study suggests that maintaining pressure on the organization is required until new ways become ingrained habits. High-performance cultures include a high degree of learning to continually renew and stay relevant in a changing world.
Values Driven (c2): High-performing cultures are driven by values. Almost all CEOs discussed the importance of having the right values embedded in the culture. The performance excellence culture consists of highly engaged employees who trust each other and work as a team to create and deliver excellent products and services that result in outstanding customer experiences.
Teamwork (c3): Cross-functional teamwork and knowledge sharing were the most common cultural characteristics identified by the participants. Collaborative teamwork and community building are fundamental parts of transformational, servant, and spiritual leadership theories. Teamwork was important for cooperative internal and external relationships and process redesign and improvement.
Excellence (c4): Quality and continuous improvement are essential for a high-performing culture. This cultural shift was necessary to become customer-driven. While not an explicit characteristic of transformational or servant leadership, quality as a priority for all workers is an element of the model for spiritual leadership.
Valued Employees (c5): A culture that respects and values employees was identified as a key cultural value. Valuing people and serving each other’s needs is a core concept for servant, transformational, and spiritual leadership. Valued employees are more likely to trust others and contribute to improvement initiatives.
Customer Focus (c6): Many CEOs identified “customer-driven” as a key cultural value. A customer-driven culture is influenced by the shared perceptions of systematic approaches, including rewards and incentives. Customer focus is linked to valued employees, as employees who are valued tend to treat customers as if they are valued.
Trust (c7): A high level of trust among the workforce and leaders was a key characteristic of culture in most cases. Trust is required to achieve and maintain excellence in any complex organization. Trust is also an essential characteristic for transformational and servant leaders.
These organizational culture characteristics, combined with leadership behaviors and individual leader characteristics, contribute to the successful transformation to performance excellence.
Implications for Practice
The study provides valuable insights for leaders aiming to transform their organizations. By adapting the behaviors and characteristics identified in the study to their own custom approach to leadership, leaders can create a culture of performance excellence that drives long-term success.
Latham, J. R. (2013). A framework for leading the transformation to performance excellence part II: CEO perspectives on leadership behaviors, individual leader characteristics, and organizational culture. In Quality Management Journal (Vol. 20, Issue 3, p. 22). DOI: 10.1080/10686967.2013.11918354
Gryna Award 2014
This paper was awarded the 2014 Gryna Award from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) – Quality Management Paper of the Year.
The Gryna Award is “presented for the paper that made the largest contribution to the extension of understanding and knowledge of the philosophy, principles, or methods of quality management during the past year.”
Note: If you missed Part 1, you might want to read that paper first. | Read Part 1