Level 5

Excerpts from CT Good to Great's Leadership Model Looks Familiar to Christians

Good to Great has struck a nerve with Christian leaders, who have latched on to your concept of Level 5 Leadership. Were you surprised by what your results showed about leadership?

I am delighted that so many people in the Christian community resonate with the Level 5 concept. They probably feel tension between the brutal competitiveness of the outside world and their inner faith and being a type of person that the New Testament calls you to be. If you thought you had to be an anti-level 5 to be successful, but now you find this evidence that your instincts were right all along, that can be powerful.

I should point out that we were not looking for Level 5. This is very important. I really dislike leadership answers, I'm biased against them, and I didn't want to write about leadership. I certainly wasn't looking for leaders like this. Our findings were a complete shock, and to see that these were the distinguishing type of leaders was out of left field and remarkable.

The kind of leaders who took companies from good to great match up with the findings of the great leaders of the world religions. That gives it so much power. It would be one thing if I came from that point of view to begin with. But I didn't believe this would be true, and yet the evidence led us to it. In the big picture, it makes sense. You would hope that in some rational way that the universe works, the findings would map with the teachings of great world religions. But I see that now in retrospect. Therefore, as a result, I'm that much more influenced by the findings.

What are the typical barriers to becoming a Level 5 leader?

The question regarding Level 5 is, which side is harder for you? The humility or the will? The magic of Level 5 is the combination of the two, not just one or the other. One side is usually harder for people than the other. Sometimes it takes brutally hard decisions to be Level 5. What if Abraham Lincoln could not stomach the consequences of his being Level 5, which was to endure five years of the bloodiest conflict so that our nation could live? Would you do whatever is needed for the cause?

If your struggle is on humility side, have people track your questions-to-statements ratio. You should see that ratio go up over time. Another thing is to really practice the discipline of the window and the mirror. Give credit to people outside the window and look at the mirror when things go wrong. As for the will: when you come to a fork in the road, one side is about being comfortable, and the other is about the cause, or the mission, or the work. You know that the best thing for the cause is to go one way, but the more comfortable decision for you is to step right. The key is to try to keep increasing your tendency to step left.