Management by Objectives.

In this article the author concentrates on what a leader need to believe and do in order to promote the high performance that will be required for organizational success in the 21st Century. His premise is that leader values are the guiding principles that determine leader behavior, which, in turn motivates and inspires follower behavior. The author describes twenty attitudes and associated behaviors that the effective leader needs to exhibit. In addition, he presents an example of how a leader might generate behavioral options stemming from one of the essential values. Management in the 21st Century will focus on the well-documented values-based theory of leadership (DePree, 1992; Tichy & Sherman, 1993). The companies that DePree and Tichy and Sherman have written about offer powerful examples of the practical impact of this new theory: Leader values are the guiding principles that determine leader behavior, which, in turn, motivates and inspires follower behavior. The end result is the high performance required for an organization to achieve competitive advantage and future success. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN LEADER VALUES AND HIGH PERFORMANCE Several authors have helped to identify the specific leader values and associated behaviors that foster high follower performance: Covey, 1991; Garfield, 1986, 1991; and Leonard, 1991. What I have learned from these authors is consistent with my own experience with high-performance organizations. There is no magic involved in promoting high performance, although the phenomenal success of some organizations might lead others to wonder if there is. Instead, the same kind of performance is within the reach of virtually any organization. What exactly does a leader need to believe and do in order to promote high performance? 1. Attend intently. Regardless of the setting, the situation, and the characters involved, the leader needs to demonstrate the same totality of focus—physical, mental, and emotional—until closure is achieved. 2. Build on success. All successful leadership situations share certain elements. The leader needs to identify those elements and consciously repeat them as a foundation for building increasingly better leadership performance. Originally published in The 1996 Annual: Volume 1, Training by J. William Pfeiffer (Ed.), San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer & Company.