Results-Based Leadership: How Leaders Build the Business and Improve the Bottom Line - Hardcover

Ulrich, David; Zenger, Jack; Smallwood, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875848710 ISBN 13: 9780875848716

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 1999

Synopsis

A landmark book, Results-Based Leadership challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding leadership. Authors Ulrich, Zenger, and Smallwood--world-renowned experts in human resources and training--argue that it is not enough to gauge leaders by personal traits such as character, style, and values. Rather, effective leaders know how to connect these leadership attributes with results. Results-Based Leadership shows executives how to deliver results in four specific areas: results for employees, for the organization, for its customers, and for its investors. The authors provide action-oriented guidelines that readers can follow to develop and hone their own results-based leadership skills. By shifting our focus to the connection between the attributes and the results of leadership, this perceptive new guide fundamentally improves our understanding of effective leadership. Results-Based Leadership brings a refreshing clarity and directness to the leadership discussion, providing a hands-on program to help executives succeed with their leadership challenges.

About this title

Product Description

Results-Based Leadership Talking about the leadership discussion, this work provides a hands-on program that helps executives succeed with leadership challenges. This book argues that it is not enough to gauge leaders by personal traits such as character, knowledge, style, and values. It tells that effective leaders know how to connect their attributes with results.

Review

Results-based Leadership teaches us that it is possible to look like a leader, say all the right things to shareholders, make employees feel good about themselves but still not produce the sorts of results everyone expects and wants from your company. A previous generation might have called this "winning the battle but losing the war".

Directing employees is harder than it looks, since past performance isn't really an indication of how a leader will do in the future. As the authors say, "The half-life of knowledge grows ever shorter in most professions, requiring even high performers to unlearn what they know and do."

The authors--a university professor and two heads of consulting firms--divide leadership priorities into four areas: employees, organisation, customers, and investors. A company head generally has to focus on one responsibility over the other three, but can't get away with ignoring any of them for very long. They explain each of these four priorities in depth--noting, for example, that keeping employees committed and productive means "mass customising" the workplace to fit individual employees' needs while keeping everyone working toward the same goal. This customisation may require adjustments unheard-of a few years ago--allowing an employee to work from home in a different city, for example--but pays off in the retention of valuable human assets that would otherwise take their training, experience, energy, and creativity to other companies, possibly competitors.

People who already have leadership positions in their companies can certainly find a great deal of important information, but the book may be even more valuable to those who wish to move into management roles. It certainly shows what challenges to expect. --Lou Schuler

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0875848710
• ISBN 13: 9780875848716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256