Why Bad Leaders Only Reward Results

We’ve all heard the saying “the results speak for themselves,”  but do they really?

The recent ESPN documentary, Long Gone Summer, highlights the infamous 1998 baseball season where Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’s home run record. If you were McGwire’s baseball manager in 98’ and only looked at the results, you give nothing except praise and recognition to McGwire. 

We now know McGwire was using performance-enhancing drugs during the season. McGwire’s reputation was tarnished and he is proof that: 

Leaders who solely reward people based on results are using the wrong formula for long-term success.  

When studying what the best leaders do for Building the Best, I found a formula leaders leverage to get consistently high results from themselves and their people. It’s is called The Route to Results: High standards produce behaviors. Those behaviors, when practiced repeatedly, become a habit, and those habits lead to results.