Another Example of Why Leadership Can Be Learned: Level 5 Leadership

Are you that shy, awkward, and non-egotistical individual? Maybe you’re somebody who has great ideas, hidden leadership skills, a great vision but just isn't outspoken enough? Maybe you’re the type of person who believes that you have the leadership skills to be great leaders but it just hasn’t been revealed yet? Well here’s where my belief for the way everyone can be a leader is supported.

Level 5 Leadership is a concept developed in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. It was a study that began with 1,435 Fortune 500 companies from 1965 to 1995. There were 11 companies that had Level 5 Leaders as CEOs who guided their organizations from mediocrity to greatness and built these companies to succeed even after they were gone. These 11 companies averaged general stock returns 6.9 times greater than the general stock market after the Level 5 Leader was named CEO. Now Collins claims that this is an empirical study not an ideological one even though some of the qualities of Leader 5 Leaders are qualitative. He beats home that each one of the 11 Level 5 Leaders out of the 1,435 companies studied had identical qualities and passed every test.

Level 5 Leaders are the executives who blend genuine personal humility with intense professional will. The general assumption is that CEOS should be charismatic and larger than life figures, but Collins blew this idea out of the water. He uses various examples in the “Level 5 Leadership” chapter of Good to Great from Kimberly-Clark, Abbott Laboratories, Gillette, Upjohn, Scott Paper, Rubbermaid, and Walgreens. Now keep in mind that there are four other levels of the leadership hierarchy according to Collins. However, only the Level 5 Leaders are the executives who took their companies from good to great and helped their companies sustain greatness. Level 5 Leaders are at the top of the pyramid, which is the skinniest part, because it is the hardest type of leader to be – which means there is the least of them in this world. The other four levels of the hierarchy can produce high degrees of success but not enough to elevate companies from mediocrity to sustained excellence. Level 5 Leaders channel their egos away from themselves and put the greater needs of the company ahead of their personal needs and interests. Their ambition is first and foremost for the institution instead of themselves.

Collins explains that the personality traits of Level 5 Leaders are “counterintuitive” to what people would expect and in fact people like Darwin Smith of Kimberly-Clark was awkward, shy, modest, shunned attention, dressed unfashionably, and even described himself as eccentric. However, the most important quality that these Level 5 Leaders did have is that they all had this fierce outlook toward life and a fanatic drive to produce results. Abraham Lincoln shared these same qualities – shy and awkward yet he challenged the South because he envisioned greater possibilities for the United States. He could have easily sat back and enjoyed eight years as President but instead he was driven to pursue excellence.

The good to great Level 5 Leaders did not talk about themselves and were humble. Collins explained that this quality was “Looking out of the Window and in the Mirror.” When things were good the Level 5 Leaders praised the people who surrounded them and when things weren’t good they looked in the mirror and blamed themselves. Collins also discovered that Level 5 Leaders came from inside the company. Many boards of directors often choose the high profile, larger than life, and charismatic individual to become CEO of their company thinking that these qualities are what produce success. However, Collins explains that these qualities are not true.

Now what you’re all trying to run through your head is am I a Level 5 Leader? Some of you may share some of these same personal characteristics, but it is hard to be a Level 5 Leader. Collins discusses that some people naturally have this seed, but he also writes that some people have this quality and it just isn’t cultivated yet. “With self-reflection, conscious personal development, a mentor, a great teacher, loving parents, and/or a significant life experience people can develop it.” I think that Collins is right, because people can learn to be this way. People can learn to be humble and people can develop a strong work ethic. It’s a personal decision that can easily be made, but are you willing to be that way? You don’t necessarily need to be shy nor do you need to be aggressive, nor do you need to be outspoken or quiet, but everyone can be modest and hard working. It is undoubtedly difficult to achieve and that’s why there aren’t many Level 5 Leaders.

The big question left unanswered during class was whether Level 5 Leadership is only pertinent to business. Collins used stock to evaluate success, but how do we measure success in politics? How do we measure success in sports...wins? How do Presidents of colleges measure success...endowment size, graduation rate, percent of students who get jobs the first year out of college, the percent of graduates who get into graduate schools? Can the Pope be a Level 5 Leader? Can the CEOs of investment banks be Level 5 Leaders when the financial industry is so volatile?

Level 5 Leadership is all around us. People just can’t identify it because there are extraordinary results being produced at this moment, but nobody knows about it since nobody is taking credit for it – the person behind that success is looking out through the window.

Good stuff,

Joey