An organization’s culture is inextricably tied to its leadership.

Healthy organizational culture is not just about employees feeling good. It’s about product quality, customer satisfaction, sales growth, strong ROE and ROI—and employee satisfaction.

Healthy leadership requires a full complement of traits and skills to help the organization balance competing needs.

WHAT MATTERS IN A LEADER?

How do you develop effective leaders? The Denison Model of organization and leadership development uses a statistically validated assessment of 12 key leadership traits—traits that can be strengthened in order to develop effective leaders who, in turn, create high-performance organizations:

• How MISSION FOCUSED are you? Do you (1) create a shared vision? (2) set goals and objectives with (3) strategic direction and intent?
• How CONSISTENT are you? Do you (4) define core values, (5) develop organizational agreement and (6) manage the coordination and organization-wide integration of business processes in a way that supports those values?
• How ADAPTABLE are you? Do you (7) keep a focus on customers and their changing needs? (8) promote organizational learning and (9) help create change?
• How COMMITTED are you to staff involvement? Do you (10) build teams, (11) empower all of your employees, and (12) develop their capabilities in line with your mission and values?

THE BALANCING ACT

All 12 of these traits are important. Overemphasizing (or ignoring) any one yields a lopsided leader and, eventually, affects the organization’s success.

Emphasizing employee empowerment and development without tying the involvement to your strategic direction is poor investment of your organization’s resources.

Focusing on the development of core values without integrating them into the fabric of your organization’s practices is an exercise in futility. (Enron’s core values were Respect, Integrity, Communication, and Excellence. Volkswagen’s values list includes Professionalism, Integrity, and Trust).

Creating change for the sake of change rather than for the sake of customer satisfaction, mission achievement, or other organizational goals is counter-productive.

You get the idea: Developing a healthy, high-performance culture means developing leadership that can balance the competing needs of the organization and its stakeholders—customers, investors, and employees.

BUILDING THE BALANCE

Based on over 25 years of research and on-the-ground experience in hundreds of companies, Denison helps assess and develop leaders so they can transform their organizations into high-performance cultures. Contact us for more information about the Denison Model, our assessment tools, and our consulting services.