A couple of weeks ago, while attending my online EA 872 class, Professor Dr. David Fusco mentioned and recommended Jim Collins book “Good to Great”. I have to confess, until then; I never heard about that publication nor about Jim Collins. Shame on me.

“Good to Great” examines the reasons which make some companies and leaders escalate to superior results. Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how? (Collins, 2001)

“Leadership utilizes social processes to enlist the support of others to accomplish a shared task. Leadership combines vision in a way that allows other to contribute. Transformation leadership combines the expected stages of patience, persistence, perseverance, and pain (i.e. resistance, obstacles, etc.), before finally prevailing.” (Fusco, 2016)

Level 5 Leadership, what Collin calls his directorship empirical findings; embodies an apparent self-contradictory mix of humility and professional will. Those leaders, do have ambitions, but first and most for their leading organizations, not for themselves.

Collin’s analysis demonstrated that every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during vital or critical transition years. The research (Collins, 2001), overwhelmingly showed that Level 5 leaders, display diligence, compelling modesty, almost fanatical eagerness for achieving sustained results; they attribute success, to factors others than themselves; and when things go poorly, take full responsibility, blaming themselves.

Reaffirming that Level 5 is an empirical finding, not an ideological one (Collins, 2001); Level 5 leaders are a study in duality, like a symmetry between modesty and willfulness, humbleness and fearlessness:

HUMILITY + WILL = LEVEL 5

References

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. HarperCollins.

Fusco, D. (2016, February 4). Understanding Business Context EA 872 Class Presentation.