The Challenge
Choosing the Right Leaders
How do you develop, find, or select leaders that are aligned with a more impactful and fulfilling purpose for organizations than simply making money?
Why do so many organizations choose competency over questionable character? The answer may simply be defined by the values of the organization. If we only look for “heroes” to make us more money, we can find those pretty easily. A Good Place organization is interested in leaders who manage systems and value people, versus just managing people.
What if we sought board leaders and a structure that helps perpetuate this kind of purpose & meaningful culture instead of simply ensuring fiduciary responsibility?
The Aim
Starting With Character
The Bible has a lot to say about a leader’s character and what successful leadership looks like. At a Good Place organization, we start with leadership as a role to serve and with the leader’s character.
Beyond the character of a leader, we can derive further purposes, roles, and responsibilities of a leader. The purpose of leadership is to steward the organization, serve its people, and determine how the organization fulfills its purpose. Leaders influence and work in a way that motivates people to want to do the right things. Leaders seek to understand the people they lead and do what is in the best interest of the organization, not just to facilitate the will of the group.
In a Good Place organization, everything leaders do is directed at accomplishing these three aims: value people, build up Good Places, and be economically regenerative through the unique business the organization is in.
Two Types of Leadership
We look at two types of leadership. Governance leadership at the Board level and management leadership at the CEO and staff level
Board Governance Leadership represents the will and desires of the moral owner(s) of the organization and governs by defining, in written policy, the ends to be accomplished by the Organization and the means to be avoided while accomplishing those ends.
Management Leadership tends to the health of the organization by tending to the growth and development of the members, taking care of the people of the organization, determining the means and managing the systems within which they work to fulfill the Charter of the organization. We address the application and role of Management Leadership more in Managing Systems.
The Results
Sustainable Alignment
The outcome of this type of approach is clear, unified, and sustainable alignment from leadership from the Board to the CEO to the Staff regarding the purpose, vision, values, and culture of the organization. This approach to leadership helps ensure stewardship of the organization and the Charter are being fulfilled within those guiding principles and behavioral values.
Equipped & Empowered
This approach equips and empowers leadership with competency, responsibility, and authority to determine how the organization or system fulfills its purpose. In a Good Place organization, management leaders have the authority and responsibility to manage systems, or the organization of systems, and value the people who work in the system, instead of only managing people or their individual tasks and activities.