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CHAPTER 13
Leadership for Performance Excellence
Teaching Notes
The keys to attaining an in-depth understanding of total quality organizations as integrated
systems are to have basic knowledge of organizing principles and organizational cultures and to
develop and use a sustainable model for performance excellence such as the Baldrige criteria as a
foundation for quality organization and continuous improvement. Building and sustaining a TQ
organization requires leadership as the "driver" for an effective TQ systems, a readiness for
This chapter focuses on leadership and the integration of concepts developed throughout the text.
This organizing focus is one that students may find easier to grasp than the cost of quality or
even planning for quality. However, you should point out that the "safe" concept of organizations
is rapidly changing, as organizations and individuals are shaken out of their complacency by
events that surround them today. The strict hierarchy of the conventional organizational
"pyramid" is giving way to a "matrix" or “process” focused organization, self-managed teams,
massive part-time employment, and economic and technological dislocations. Numerous
attempts to align the corporate culture with the total quality management, global marketplace,
and "lean and mean" concepts, not all of which have been resounding successes, have brought us
into the 21st Century. Key objectives are:
• To define leadership as the ability to positively influence people and systems under one’s
authority to have a meaningful impact and achieve important results. Leaders create clear
Leadership for Performance Excellence 2
• To understand the perspective of strategic leadership, defined as “a person’s ability to
anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically, and work with others to
initiate changes that will create a viable future for the organization, and its competitive
advantage to the organization in this way.” Activities that strategic leaders perform
• To study the leadership system and how leadership is exercised, formally and
informally, throughout an organization. These elements include how key decisions are
made, communicated, and carried out at all levels. The leadership system includes
structures and mechanisms for decision making, selection and development of leaders
and managers, and reinforcement of values, directions, and performance expectations.
• To investigate the contemporary and emerging leadership theories include situational
leadership, transactional leadership theory, transformational leadership theory, substitutes
• To realize that an important aspect of an organization’s leadership is governance – the
system of management and controls exercised in the stewardship of an organization and
corporate social responsibility (CSR). Governance processes may include approving
• To show that organizations adopt TQ to react to competitive threats or take advantage of
perceived opportunities, however, threats are the most effective in providing an incentive
to act and change the organization’s culture.
• To develop an understanding of the need for commitment from organization’s senior
Leadership for Performance Excellence 3
ANSWERS TO QUALITY IN PRACTICE KEY ISSUES
Leadership at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital
1. Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital (GSAM) reflects the concept of strategic leadership
by:
a. Establishing an inspiring vision: To provide an exceptional patient experience
marked by superior health outcomes, service, and value.
b. Enrolling leaders in the vision.
c. Creating alignment, ownership, and transparency to support the vision.
2. The GSAM leadership behaviors, practices, and theories became evident as they
3. The GSAM Leadership System model aligns extremely closely with the Baldrige Criteria
framework. Based on Category 1.2a of the Baldrige Criteria, senior leadership at GSAM
has established a systematic 8-step governance process that cascades guidance from the
Leadership for Performance Excellence 4
immunizations, a hospital food pantry for associates, and financial/in-kind gifts also
support environmental, social, and economic systems. All executive team members
having multiple involvements on local boards; as well as the professional nursing staff,
Leadership Changes at Alcoa
1. From a strategic management standpoint, it is difficult to speculate on why corporate
management did not take definitive action for five years at the Addy plant. However,
various theories might be put forth. These might be termed the “stay-the-course,”
“insufficient measures,” and the maintaining “market presence” strategies.
First, the company had invested in innovative structuring that had caused the plant to
become a “showcase.” At first, this approach seemed to have worked well. However,
systems (human and technical) which are not maintained and improved tend to
2. Simonic seemed to use a mix of transformational and transactional leadership styles. The
CEOs and executive team members of nearly every Malcolm Baldrige Award recipient
have generally modeled this leadership behavior, and some empirical evidence found in
Leadership for Performance Excellence 5
transformational leaders. An organization pursuing TQ needs both those who establish
visions and those who are effective at the day-to-day (transactional) tasks needed to
achieve them. In fact, Avolio and Bass extended the concept of transformational
3. It would appear to be moderately difficult to duplicate the leadership style used by
Simonic and the organizational systems practiced at Addy. The basic management
structure was built around what might be called a socio-technical system design that
included teamwork, informal, democratic management style, and highly technical process
management and control requirements. As indicated in the text, organization structure has
numerous facets, including:
1. Company operational and organizational guidelines. Standard practices that have
developed over the firm’s history often dictate how a company organizes and operates.
2. Management style. The management team operates in a manner unique to a given
Leadership for Performance Excellence 6
ANSWERS TO REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Leadership is defined as the ability to positively influence people and systems under
one’s authority to have a meaningful impact and achieve important results. It implies the
right to exercise authority and the ability to achieve results. Strong leadership is
necessary to successfully implement a quality process. Leaders may seek to motivate
employees and develop enthusiasm for quality with rhetoric, but taking strong, decisive,
and personal action to implement quality changes makes a bigger impression on
2. Six competencies for leadership based on more than 50 authors’ thoughts on leadership
are:
• Navigator – creates shared meaning and provides direction towards a vision, mission,
goal or end-result. This competency may entail risk taking and requires constant
evaluation of the operating environment to ensure progress in the appropriate
direction is achieved.
• Communicator – effectively listens and articulates messages to provide shared
meaning. This competency involves the creation of an environment that reduces
barriers and fosters open, honest and honorable communication.
• Mentor – provides others with a role to guide their actions. This competency requires
the development of personal relationships that help others develop trust, integrity and
ethical decision making.
• Learner – continuously develops personal knowledge, skills and abilities through
A collection of personal leadership characteristics underlie these six competencies:
1. Accountability – taking responsibility for the organization, community or self that the
leader serves. This provides the means for measuring performance and dealing with
performance that is not good.
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3. Humility – what gives excellent leaders their ability to mentor, communicate and
learn, and understand that they are servants of those that follow.
4. Integrity – the ability to discern what is right from wrong and commit to the right
path.
5. Creativity – the ability to see possibilities, horizons and futures that don’t yet exist,
enabling the leader to help create a shared vision.
3. Key practices for performance excellence leadership may be found in Table 13-1. They
include, in summary form:
a. Relating to visionary leadership, there is the need for organization leaders (especially
Senior Leaders) to set and deploy organizational vision and values, demonstrate those
values through person actions, promote an environment leading to legal and ethical
behavior, and create a sustainable organization.
b. Relating to organizational performance, there is the need for leaders to create an
d. Relating to performance and results, leaders are expected to take an active role in
reward and recognition programs to reinforce high performance, create an action focus to
Leadership for Performance Excellence 8
4. Strategic leadership can be defined as “a person's ability to anticipate, envision, maintain
flexibility, think strategically, and work with others to initiate changes that will create a
viable future for the organization, and its competitive advantage to the organization in
5. The leadership system refers to how leadership is exercised throughout the organization,
and includes both formal and informal mechanisms for leadership development. It
6. Steering teams in leadership systems have the responsibility to provide leadership,
planning, implementation, and review direction. Leadership involves articulating a
quality vision, and ensuring that the business management process is aligned, deployed,
7. Emerging theories -- enhance or extend current theory by attempting to answer questions
raised, but not answered, by traditional contingency approaches. For example,
Attributional Theory states that leaders' judgment on how to deal with subordinates in a
specific situation is based on their attributions of the internal or external causes of the
Leadership for Performance Excellence 9
8. Transactional Leadership Theory assumes that certain leaders may develop the ability
to inspire their subordinates to exert extraordinary efforts to achieve organizational goals,
through behaviors that may include contingent rewards, and active and passive
management by exception.
Transformational Leadership Theory holds that leaders adopt many of the behaviors
including idealized influence, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, and
Bass differentiated transformational from transactional leadership behavior, stating:
“Transformational leaders have greater interest in continuous organizational change and
improvement transcending or aligning self-interests for the longer-range greater good of
the organization and its members. This is in contrast to transactional leaders, who are
Transformational leadership is more aligned with organizational change required by total
quality and Baldrige-like performance excellence models. The CEOs and executive team
members of nearly every Baldrige Award recipient have generally modeled this
leadership behavior, and some empirical evidence found in research suggests that
transformational leadership behavior is strongly correlated with lower turnover, higher
Leadership for Performance Excellence 10
9 Corporate social responsibility and community support efforts include what is termed
“Corporate Governance” in the Baldrige Award criteria. It includes development of
ethics, protection of public health, safety, and concern for the environment. Senior
leaders must act to prevent problems, make forthright responses when problems occur,
and make information available in order to maintain public awareness, safety, and
confidence in the organization. Leaders should not only comply with local, regional, and
10. The International Organization for Standardization has developed a voluntary social
responsibility standard, ISO 26000:2010 – Guidance on social responsibility, attesting to
the importance of this issue. The standard provides guidance on
11. CSR has been prominent in the Baldrige Criteria since its inception. In the initial 1988
Criteria, public responsibility was focused narrowly on mechanisms used for external
Leadership for Performance Excellence 11
expanded to include how the company extended its quality leadership to the external
community and integrated its responsibilities to the public for health, safety,
environmental protection, and ethical business practice into its quality policies and
In 1993, the core value introduced the notion of treating local, state, and federal legal and
regulatory requirements as areas for continuous improvement ‘beyond mere compliance’.
It also expanded on the notion of corporate citizenship, stating: “Corporate citizenship
refers to leadership and support – within reasonable limits of a company’s resources – of
publicly important purposes, including the above-mentioned areas of corporate
In 2000, a significant revision was made to this core value:
An organization’s leadership needs to stress its responsibilities to the public and needs to
practice good citizenship. These responsibilities refer to basic expectations of your
organization – business ethics and protection of public health, safety and the
environment. Health, safety, and the environment include your organization’s operations
as well as the life cycles of your products and services. Also organizations need to
emphasize resource conservation and waste reduction at the source. Planning should
Leadership for Performance Excellence 12
12. An important aspect of any leadership system is governance, which refers to the system
of management and controls exercised in the stewardship of an organization. Corporate
charters, bylaws, and policies document the rights and responsibilities of
owners/shareholders, board of directors, and the CEO, and describe how the organization
is managed to ensure accountability, transparency of operations, and fair treatment of all
13. Organizations may address societal responsibilities in a number of different ways. An
important aspect of CSR is safety in product design and manufacturing. Planning
activities such as product design should anticipate adverse impacts from production,
distribution, transportation, use, and disposal of a company’s products to protect the
