Exemplary leadership: Modeling the Leadership Style of Shahid Sattari

One of the vital drivers of excellence and transformation of organizations is the leadership. Knowing how leadership is exercised by outstanding leaders with extraordinary performance and achievements can help to develop this superior capability in various organizations. This research has been done with the aim of conceptualizing and designing a quiddity-oriented model of Shahid Mansour Sattari's leadership style. This research is applied, interpretative and inductive, and has been done with a qualitative approach. The data purposefully selected analyzed through Glaserian Emerging Grounded Theory. The provided model consists of three main interconnected layers. The first layer shows his practices of leadership, which includes the main categories of arena-based leadership, modeling the way, human resource empowerment, and encouragement. The second layer (transformational and innovational leadership) represents the most important distinguishing features of his leadership and the result of the first layer. Transformational leadership includes the categories of challenge-orientating, continuous transformation and excellence, infrastructural and institutional transformations, and cultural transformation. Innovative leadership also includes creative removal of limitations, optimal utilization of capacities, promotion of creativity and innovation, and innovative achievements. The third layer of this leadership style is visionary, which represents how to draw and share the ideal of national and organizational self-sufficiency, organizational excellence, and scientific and technological self-sufficiency in order to promote air power and national authority. Accordingly, Shahid Sattari's leadership style represents a model that has been able to make significant innovative and transformational achievements in line with the vision of self-sufficiency. This leadership style has been successful and effective both in crisis situations and during organizational transformation and improvement. The promotion and application of this model can provide valuable knowledge for the development of the leadership ability of managers and help to understand how to achieve extraordinary results by organizational leaders.