Results and Accountability are MIA in Leadership Development Models
Time to make a connection between leadership models and results and accountability
As a practitioner in leadership development for more than two decades, I have always kept in mind that a leader is placed in/takes a position to lead a team to achieve a result. After all, leaders drive change. If no change is needed, do we even need a leader?
At a previous employer, we had six corporate values but the one that dominated was Results Orientation. Your entire performance was measured by what results you accomplished. During the annual performance review, we had ranking and rating sessions where managers would present their people. The more and better results their people had, the easier it was to communicate and share the outstanding performance of the manager’s team. If results were missing, it could easily lead to the dreaded Performance Improvement Plan or PIP. Fail the plan and you were out of the company. In the middle where the ones who had some results but they may not be viewed as valuable as others.
There I learned and taught about Situational Leadership, a leadership model developed by Hershey and Blanchard described in their classic Management of Organizational Behavior. Numerous editions are available. The link is to the 8th edition. While this model is very good at helping the leader determine their behavior based on follower’s skill level and commitment, the drive for results and to hold the team, including the leader, accountable seem to be missing. At best, they are assumed in what helps the leader determine what needs to be done and how the team is doing.
So I asked Gemini, Alphabet’s AI engine, for a list of the five leading leadership development models. They are all excellent but none of them focus on results and accountability. The list included:
- Transformational Leadership — inspiring and motivating followers to transcend their self-interest for the good of the organization. Great, but nothing on defining results and ensuring accountability for accomplishing them. Maybe buried in the details?
- Servant leadership — prioritizes the needs of the followers over the leader’s own interests. But what about the interests of the organization that led to the formation of the team and the assignment of the leader? Missing In Action (MIA).
- Authentic Leadership — the leader must be true to themselves and lead with integrity. Results? Accountability? Again, MIA.
- Situational Leadership — see discussion above. MIA.
- Agile Leadership — I’m very knowledgeable about agile with more than 20 years of experience, but it’s not a leadership development model in my opinion. It’s an operating model. However, of these five models, this one comes closest because of the existence of a product owner (in Scrum) who articulates the needs of the organization and helps manage the performance of the team.
I also have a lot of experience with the Six Domains of Leadership™ model from profs. Sitkin and Lind. To me, a much more complete model than the other five even if not listed above (guess it needs more publications and SEO work to move up in rank). However, results and accountability are buried. Setting of goals can be seen in the Vision subdomain of the Personal Leadership domain. Accountability can be interpreted within the Supportive and the Responsible Leadership domains. However, in both cases they are not obvious and it is a stretch.
Maybe the models assume the leader knows what needs to happen? Maybe there’s a layer above the leadership development models that help leaders identify and understand the goals and how to ensure they are achieved? Strategy development, program planning and tracking, and OKRs come to mind. But, should there be a more clear connection between the models and this overriding need to make sure goals and objectives are defined and achieved? I’ve raised this need before and was told it was management, not leadership. Apologies, but as a leader it doesn’t matter what it is called: I need to understand and achieve the goals. The models are great at helping me understand how my behaviors affect the team and their performance. More clarity on goals and their execution is needed. Here’s a call for researches to go beyond their current models and articulate the connection.
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