Leadership is prime: How do you measure Leadership Excellence?

Abstract

Leadership has, for a long time, been a topic that attracts the attention of both academics and practitioners. In spite of the extensive literature on this matter, there is almost a complete absence of models to explain how leadership works and how to measure Leadership Excellence. It is in the Business Excellence Model that the importance of leadership becomes very clear; however, leadership is not just one more criterion, it is the prime aspect of the Business Excellence Model (Kanji, 2002), showing that leadership is responsible for driving the organisation in every area towards quality and excellence. In this paper, the author will present a structural model of leadership using the critical successes factors that provide a measurement of Leadership Excellence Index. In turn, this will reflect, in quantitative terms and through a single and integrated measure, the simultaneous performance of leaders in the roles of establishing and sharing the values, developing and communicating the vision, defining the mission, selecting and implementing a strategy and managing other operational key issues within the organisation. This sound and robust methodology leads to leadership measures that are innovative and it helps the identification of leadership areas that need to be addressed more carefully if the overall excellence index is to be increased.

Keywords:

• leadership behaviour
• participative leadership
• management style
• Leadership Excellence Model (LEM)
• Leadership Excellence in Portuguese municipalities

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gopal K. Kanji

Email: [email protected]