Jim Collins – www.jimcollins.com– is one of the most respected researchers on the topic of leadership and the author of the international bestseller Good to Great. His website is an extremely rich resource into his 30+ years of research into what makes good organizations tick.
Since my posts all deal with how to have a positive impact – his work is appropriate considering what he and his team have found out about the characteristics of the most successful leader; the Level 5 leader.
That person “Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will…They were self-effacing individuals who displayed the fierce resolve to do whatever needed to be done to make the company great. While Level 5 leaders can come in many personality packages, they are often quiet, reserved and even shy. Every good-to-great transition in our research began with a Level 5 leader who motivated the enterprise more with inspired standards than inspiring personality.”
Collins goes on to observe, “It didn’t matter whether the company was consumer or industrial, in crisis or steady state, offered services or products. It didn’t matter when the transition took place or how big the company. All the good-to-great companies had Level 5 leadership at the time of transition… Given that Level 5 leadership cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom, especially the belief that we need larger-than-life saviors with big personalities to transform companies, it is important to note that Level 5 is an empirical finding, not an ideological one.”
The four levels leading up to Level 5 are Level 1, the highly capable individual, the Level 2 contributing team member, the Level 3 competent manager, the Level 4 effective leader with Level 5 being the executive.
In Good to Great his team identified companies that made the leap from good results to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years.
There are two Harvard Business Review articles that I have given to hundreds of leaders in all sectors back when I was consulting as resources to help them understand and move toward being concerned about the success of those around them versus being focused totally on their own success. Collins’ article Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve in the July-August 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review is one of those articles. The other, Leadership That Gets Results by Dan Goleman in the March-April 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review, talks about the importance of emotional intelligence – the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively.
Moving Forward I will be sharing a few more leadership articles based on the consulting I have done with leaders from six continents.
Have a positive impact year,
Peter
Website/Blog – https://lnkd.in/gygJ37b