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How Leadership Works

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Abstract

In this chapter, the authors introduce the concept of a Leadership Operating System (OS) as the main mechanism through which leaders drive performance. They begin by describing a fundamental challenge faced by all traditional leadership competency models, namely that they ignore the role context plays in determining the impact of competencies. They then introduce research showing that as leaders become more senior, their impact on the business’ performance becomes more indirect—achieved not through directly driving certain behaviours in others, but by creating an operating environment that enables and supports certain behaviours in others. Finally, they describe their research revealing the three key elements these operating environments are comprised of and introduce a model capturing these elements.

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Kinley, N., Ben-Hur, S. (2020). How Leadership Works. In: Leadership OS. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27293-7_1

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