Level 5 Leadership: the Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve

Executive Summary

This paper focuses on the following topics: what characterizes a level 5 leader, findings of Collin’s research after analyzing 1,435 companies that appeared on Fortune 500, providing corporate examples whose stock outperformed the market, what is the implication in today’s management of the concept “achieve greatness or perish”, how would a level 5 leader influence an organization’s brand, how can level 5 leadership ability be developed. My arguments will be evaluated using Collin’s article, previous articles studied during this course, my own research.

The paper concludes that transforming a company from good to great needs Level 5 leaders together with practicing the other good-to-great disciplines of Level 5 leaders, hiring the right people, firing the wrong people, and creating a culture of discipline.(Word count 2873)

Introduction

In his article Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve, Collins argues that the most important ingredient that transforms a good company into a great one is having a Level 5 leader, an executive that combines personal humility with professional will.

In this article, he presents the skills and traits necessary for Level 5 leaders. During his research, he discovered common traits of Level 5 leaders: humility, will, ferocious resolve, giving credit to others, taking the blame on themselves for poor results.

In this paper, I will focus on what characterizes a level 5 leader, findings of Collin’s research after analyzing 1,435 companies that appeared on Fortune 500, providing corporate examples whose stock outperformed the market, what is the implication in today’s management of the concept “achieve greatness or perish”, how would a level 5 leader influence an organization’s brand, how can level 5 leadership ability be developed. My arguments will be evaluated using Collin’s article, previous articles studied during this course, my own research.

Analysis

According to Jim Collins, what...