Results-Based Leadership Differentiated

According to Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norm Smallwood, the authors of 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. And this is what results-based leadership is all about: how organizational capabilities and leadership competencies lead to and are connected to desired results.

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," write the authors of Results-Based Leadership.