The Golden Point Triad
Leadership style, like a symphony conductor's connection to the music score, requires alignment to core values.
What if you were the conductor of a symphony, and a few pages into the piece, you realize that the music score that everyone is playing is different than what you see on your music stand? Similarly, for example, if a leadership focus is centered around task and high productivity, yet stated corporate core values lean towards a focus on the team and people, this dissonance between management style and the core values can cause employee disengagement and reduce the integrity of the corporate vision and mission. Misalignment of leadership style to corporate core values can leave the CEO and other top executives of the business in discord with the operations and performance of the teams around the company. This occurs all too often with hyper-growth organizations that drown in their own success. As business grows, operational changes occur, and culture begins to evolve. The core values that were once aligned with leadership styles, and vice versa, the leadership styles that were once aligned with stated core values, may now need to transform to maintain high fidelity performance and output and avoid a disengaged employee base.
When CEO's and next-level executives build self awareness of their own approach to leadership they create a strong foundation for their personal and professional development. This provides the flexibility to choose the style that works best and in concert with stated values depending on the situation at hand.
The Golden Point Triad
We've recently released The Golden Point Triad that provides a model for values-based leadership that can quickly test alignment between your leadership style and core values. Using primary core values that align with TASK focused leadership, TEAM focused leadership, and a HYBRID of both styles, you can conduct a litmus test to determine any misalignment that may need to be explored and corrected within your business.
We developed The Golden Point Triad based on our group survey of 28 executives from varying industries, that included Human Resources experts, on which corporate core values align best with the managerial grid and their corresponding leadership styles (Blake and Mouton, 1964). We concluded that primary and secondary core values align strongly with three aspects of leadership; we narrowed the managerial grid into task focused, team focused, and a hybrid focus of leadership.
Maintaining leadership alignment with core values creates high integrity, employee engagement, and more effective workflows around the business that results in better outcomes. Our example primary core values shown in the model above can quickly test your set of stated corporate core values and its harmony with your management style. The three primary core values shown in each segment of the triad tend to represent most of the core values with the specified leadership focus. We believe it can help confirm your executive alignment to bring about true values-based leadership in your organization.
Golden Point Executives is a boutique leadership & team performance advisory firm. We help C-Suite and next-level executives and their organizations gain that winning edge that propels them to their next level of success. Download our complimentary one-page guide to The Golden Point Triad from our documents library here.
Let us know how we can help empower you and your fellow executives to elevate your excellence and alignment.
References:
Blake, Robert R. and Jane S. Mouton (1964), The Managerial Grid, Houston: Gulf Publishing Company.
Blake, Robert R. and Jane S. Mouton (1969), Building A Dynamic Corporation Through Grid Organization Development, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Hart, Howard (1973), The Impact of the Managerial Grid on Organization Change, Florida Atlantic University