BY: DIONE GEIGER, PRESIDENT, FLORIDA STERLING COUNCIL | PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
The Sterling/Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence has at its foundation a set of 11 Core Values that represent the beliefs and behaviors embedded in high-performing organizations. These values are indeed the characteristics of what constitutes robust leadership traits for highly effective leaders.
Why are core values necessary to organizations, and how do these translate in the essence of the national standards for leadership, which is the Baldrige Criteria, is an essential element of visionary leadership, which is listed as our first of the 11 Core Values:
- Visionary Leadership
- Customer-Focused Excellence
- Valuing People
- Agility and Resilience
- Organizational Learning
- Focus on Success and Innovation
- Management by Fact
- Societal Contributions
- Ethics and Transparency
- Delivering Value and Results
- Systems Perspective
As leaders, we must emphasize the attributes that are the basis for how we must work and treat others, including its broader context comprising societal contributions.
These 11 Core Values constitute the essence of how high-performing organizations operate and how leaders across the entire system operationalize the meaning behind how we work and treat each other every day. Indeed, this past year, Agility and Resilience were demonstrated time after time and impacted how we managed organizations, as we quickly pivoted during COVID by adopting virtual practices, among other attributes. These values are a living aspect of high-performing organizations and must be understood and embraced by leaders to sustain performance excellence.
I ask you to consider which Core Value you will leave behind and which is an option versus the way we must work to truly achieve high levels of performance to support our mission and service? I encourage you to personally choose to adopt all 11 and continuously work at becoming the best at what I do.