Result Oriented Leadership

Result Oriented Leadership

When you ask any group of businesspeople the question ‘What do effective leaders do?’ you will hear a range of answers like leaders set strategy, they motivate, they create a mission, and they build a culture. Then ask ‘What should leaders do?’ If the group is experienced, you’ll likely hear one response: the leader’s most important job is to get results.

How? The mystery of what leaders can and ought to do in order to spark the best performance from their people is very old. In recent years, that mystery has spawned an entire cottage industry: literally thousands of ‘leadership experts’ have made careers of testing and coaching executives, all in pursuit of creating businesspeople who can turn bold objectives (be they strategic, financial, organizational, or all three) into reality.

Still, effective leadership eludes many people and organizations. One reason is that until recently, virtually no quantitative research has demonstrated which precise leadership behaviours yield positive results. Leadership experts proffer advice based on inference, experience, and instinct. Sometimes that advice is which precise leadership behaviours yield positive results. Leadership experts submit advice based on inference, experience, and instinct. Sometimes that advice is right on target; sometimes it’s not.

But new research takes much of the mystery out of effective leadership. It found six distinct leadership styles, each springing from different components of emotional intelligence. The styles, taken individually, appear to have a direct and unique impact on the working atmosphere of a company, division, or team, and in turn, on its financial performance. And perhaps most important, the research indicates that leaders with the best results do not rely on only one leadership style; they use most of them in a given week (seamlessly and in different measure) depending on the business situation. Imagine the styles, then, as the array of clubs in a golf pro’s bag. Over the course of a game, the pro picks and chooses clubs based on the demands of the shot. Sometimes he has to ponder his selection, but usually it is automatic. The pro senses the challenge ahead, swiftly pulls out the right tool, and elegantly puts it to work. That’s how high-impact leaders operate, too.