Values-Based Leadership
We are regularly seeing cases of questionable leadership in the media. With the discoveries made by the recent Royal Commissions, the #metoo movement, Trump scandals and the Liberal Party spill, a renewed emphasis and stronger focus on ethical leadership has never been more important. Successful leadership should revolve around an organisation's values, with the pair driving each other and creating a virtuous self-reinforcing cycle.
Values-based leadership is about inspiring and empowering others by articulating and modelling shared organisational values. Ideally, an organisation's values should drive the selection, training and evaluation of its leaders. In parallel, leaders should also be reinforcing these values via their direct behaviours, effectively creating a positive feedback loop.
Many contemporary leadership failures could be attributed to a lack of values-based leadership. When leadership has not been driven by a balanced set of values, there is a tendency for leaders to revert back to more narrow and impulsive behaviours.
From our direct work with our clients, we constantly observe the huge and positive impacts a values-based leader brings into an organisation. Effective values-based leadership cannot only boost staff alignment to the company's mission and values, but could also lead to a more coherent workforce, as both leaders and employees are driven by the same values of the organisation.
Emerald Literati Award - Voice Project's Award Winning Paper on Leadership
Voice Project received the "Emerald Literati" award for our research paper on leadership. Written by Dr Peter Langford, Dr Louise Parkes and Cameron Dougall; the paper focuses on psychology's "Big Five" model and how it may be used as a guiding tool for leadership development. The paper itself also acts as the foundation for Voice Project's very own 360 leadership tool.
About the Presenter
Dr Peter Langford is the founder and director of Voice Project. In previous roles, Dr Langford was a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Director of the Organisational Psychology program at Macquarie University, and was previously a change management consultant at Accenture. He is a winner of a Macquarie University Innovation Award for commercial application of research, the Elton Mayo award for early career achievement from the College of Organisational Psychology, and the Emerald Literati Awards For Outstanding Paper 2018. Dr Langford's areas of expertise include employee engagement, leadership, culture and service quality.
Voice Project provides research-backed surveys that measure employee engagement, leadership capability and customer satisfaction. These state-of-the-art surveys help organisations get the best feedback to drive positive change. Voice Project works with organisations across the not-for profit, private and public sectors. Get in touch.