Transformational CEOs Create an Environment for Excellence

While they are often popular icons of industry, narcissistic leaders are the opposite of the transformational CEOs in our study. Michael Maccoby notes "narcissistic leaders can be poor listeners, sensitive to criticism, lacking in empathy and 'relentless and ruthless in their pursuit of victory.'" The transformational CEOs in our study were excellent listeners, collaborative - exploring many perspectives, were empathetic and were not motivated by personal recognition for their achievements.

Transformational CEOs are humble and less motivated by a desire to be recognized for their personal achievements than other effective senior leaders. They are motivated to make the overall organization successful. When asked what was most satisfying aspect of leading organizational change to create a high performing organization all 14 participants in a recent study told stories of how the people in the organization had accomplished something extraordinary. They were motivated to help enable the accomplishments of their team to better serve the customers, patients, students, etc.

The low need for personal recognition combined with other leader motivations and approaches such as low desire for sole responsibility, a collaborative leadership model and a systems thinking approach, create an environment for synergistic problem solving and creative solutions and strategies for sustaining high performance. These approaches to leadership eventually resulted in organizational culture change and the embedding of teamwork throughout the organization culture. Teamwork was the most common organizational culture value identified by most of the participating CEOs.

This post is the last in a series of the seven differentiating factors that make CEOs who have led Baldrige-based organization transformation different from other effective leaders.

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