Page 201 - Appreciative Leadership

174 Appreciative Leadership

Integrity: The Ultimate Measure of

Organizational Success

Appreciative Leadership creates the conditions for sustainable high
performance by engaging with others to articulate a set of shared prin-
ciples. Once principles are articulated and agreed on, they become the
way work is done and the measure of success. When you compliment
someone on a job well done and he or she responds with “Th ank you
for noticing, that’s how we do it around here,” you know you have met
someone working from shared principles.
Appreciative Leadership taps the well of positive power through
principled performance. It assumes that people generally want to con-

tribute their best to make a positive difference. It recognizes that, in
order to succeed, people need to know what is expected of them and
how to best apply their strengths.
As Figure 7-1 shows, principled performance occurs when people

share a set of principles. Th e fulfillment of which invites them to apply
their strengths.
It’s a simple and powerful formula for creating high performance.

The key to organizational success, however, is in ensuring that you have
the right ingredients to accomplish your goals. Since your principles
become your measure of success, it is absolutely and strategically essential
that they be congruent with your mission, strategy, and goals. Successful
organizations, businesses, schools, airlines, health care systems, and asso-
ciations are principled in ways that support their mission and strategy.
As Figure 7-2 shows, success has two important measures: the
degree to which your principles are integral to your mission, strat-
egy, and goals; and the degree to which you live and work to your
principles. In essence, integrity—the degree to which your mission,

FIGURE 7-1
A FORMULA FOR PRINCIPLED PERFORMANCE

Shared Applied Principled
+ =
Principles Strengths Performance