Humble Leadership
I discovered that I frequently refer to Jim Collins' concept of Level 5 Leadership when it comes to the question what characterizes the very best company leaders in order to explain why they are so successful. In 2001 Collins published the results of an outstanding research in an article and in the book “From Good to Great”. Over 4 years he and his research team looked closely at companies that significantly outperformed the stock market and compared these to those who did just well. He identified 7 elements that contribute to such a success. The key of those being “Level 5 Leadership” which translates into executives that blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will, ferocious resolve, and the tendency to give credit to others while assigning blame to themselves. Egocentricity was found as counterproductive although many boards of directors look for leaders with a strong ego. The example of Iacocca who first saved Chrysler, then started promoting himself, writing a book, appearing regularly in talk shows while the stock of his company fell again below the market in the second half of his tenure is revealing.
Looking at humility as a main trait of such a Level 5 Leader the question is: can you learn it? What background did those leaders have, do they have anything in common? Collins' does not have any data to explain this, one leader was a christian, others survived cancer or the war, experiences that made these people become humble. Another was part of a family which lead the company for generations.
Humility for me is closely connected with spirituality, believing in something bigger than ourselves and our world. One would probably find all big religion founders teaching humility, like Jesus Christ and Buddha. Thanks to Sin-Yaw it happens that I have an example at hand from the latter, the ancient scripture of the Diamond Sutras in which Buddha and one of his disciples have a conversation on how to become a Buddha. You need to follow two steps: first forget about self completely, and then devote yourself to the world. Meditation is used to achieve the first step. So meditation as leadership training??
Posted at
02:10PM Jun 13, 2007
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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