From an article in the Harvard Business Review, January 2001 by Jim Collins
The author conducted a five year research project aimed at answering the question: “What catapults a company form merely good to truly great?” The study started out not as a study of leaders, and even specifically tried to study the company not the leader, but ended up being a study about leadership traits. They found that the successful companies all had leaders with traits of what they ended up terming “Level 5 leadership”. The author stresses that “Level 5 is an empirical finding not an ideological one.” They also stresses that a “Level 5” leader was essential for a great company but not enough in itself.
Level 5 leadership outlines some of the qualities important to being an effective and great leader. Having a “big personality” is not a requirement. They found that leaders attended to people first before strategy. I think this is situational; in some cases it would work and in others it wouldn’t. They discussed professional will and humility. Humility is definitely the more rare. Being modest yet willful, shy yet fearless they deemed important. Good traits but maybe an oversimplification of reality. Great leaders come in many shapes and sizes and attempts to pigeon hole go against my best judgment. Along with humility, the offshoot of modesty is important. Modesty, in this context, means not ascribing success to oneself, as the leader, but ascribing credit to the group.
A couple other ideas in the article that I agreed with and found very compelling were the “Hedgehog Concept” and “A Culture of Discipline”. These were good! “The Hedgehog Concept” entails 3 overarching ideas that everything a company does should fit into: 1) know and do what you can be the best in the world at, 2) know how your economics work best, and 3) know what best ignites the passions of your organization’s people. The “Culture of Discipline” states that three forms of discipline are important: 1) people, 2) thought and 3) action. Kind of reminds me of the Buddhist’s belief in the power of (and importance of being mindful of) 1) thoughts, 2) words and 3) actions.