Role of Leadership in Performance Excellence

This review examines the recent theoretical and empirical development in the leadership literature, as many leadership theories are proposed in the recent years. This paper discusses the impact of leaders in performance excellence initiatives. We discuss leadershipas learned values, attitudes and behavior. Since, leaders often determine followers’ future as well as their own, it is essential that they should learn appropriate values, attitude and behavior, so that they can lead an organization in a positive direction. Performance is considered the outcome of all cumulative efforts in an organization. Excellence of performance is a wider concept, where leadership has a pivotal role to play. This review of research reveals a set of leadership characteristics which bring performance excellence instead of simple performance. Such characteristics appear to be quite similar to the nature of transformational form of leadership. To pursue sustainable achievement, organizations must focus on the re-engineering and management process. Leadership traits uphold principles and provide guiding values to foster such processes.