I was a reluctant leadership researcher. Originally, my research agenda was focused on organization design and systems that create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders. However, as Dr. Deming used to point out, leaders are the only ones with the authority and power to change the system. Consequently, I became interested in leaders as “architects” of their organizations and how they successfully lead the transformation of their organization to achieve and sustain high performance.
CEO Leading Transformation Project
The Leading the Journey to Performance Excellence: CEO Perspectives research project was a result of the 2006 Monfort Institute Summit in Bachelor Gulch, Colorado (Latham, 2008). At this summit researchers and executives worked together to develop a research agenda that was both important to leaders and of interest to the researchers. The top two topic categories from this summit were culture and leadership. The need for a better understanding of the leadership for performance excellence drove the CEO study which resulted in the development of the Leading Transformation Framework that is described in two journal papers. | Visit the CEO Leading Transformation Project
Additional Leadership “Spin-off” Projects
Motivational and Attitudinal Patterns (MAPs)
The original CEO LTPE study identified several leadership characteristics, behaviors, and activities that raised questions regarding the CEO’s attitudes and motivations. In short, these CEOs were not your typical senior executives. They seemed very different than most of the senior leaders that I have worked with over the years. To investigate this further using more objective quantitative methods, to supplement the qualitative analysis, I worked with three colleagues who are experts in this area. | Visit the CEO MAPs Project
Servant Leadership
Many of the findings in the original CEO LTPE study were related to key concepts in servant leadership. Servant leadership concepts were linked directly or indirectly with 22 of the 35 top-level concepts in the leading transformation framework (Latham, 2013). This research “stream” focuses on the intersection between servant leadership and the leading transformation framework, two of the research streams that I call for being combined in Latham (2014). | Visit the Servant Leadership Project
Spiritual Leadership
Many of the original CEO LTPE study findings appear consistent with the concepts found in spiritual leadership as described by Fry (2003) and Fry & Nisiewicz (2013). Spiritual leadership concepts were linked directly or indirectly with 21 of the 35 top-level concepts in the leading transformation framework (Latham, 2013). This research project brings together leading transformation framework and spiritual leadership, two of the research “streams” that I call for being combined in Latham (2014). | Visit the Spiritual Leadership Project
