Personnel decisions in complex organizations must be made with no final guide other than one's own subjective pattern of person perceptions. From a series of studies an attempt is made to extricate from school principals the perceptual structures that appear to have guided their personnel decisions. The characteristics that they attribute to strong or weak staff members are found to correspond to their positions on four dimensions of perceptual behavior: complexity-simplicity, explicitness, decision dominance, and role assumption. Interestingly, leadership style was quick to reveal which priorities the principals used in determining which teachers are good teachers. Cultural differences are apparent. (Author/IRT)