Humility is good. But it may not make your company great.

Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve is excerpted from the mega-selling business book by Jim Collins, Good to Great.

Collins describes a Level 5 leader as “an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will” — in my estimation, an external, subjective judgment with no data to back it up. My opinion is formed in part, no doubt, by our earlier reading of Good to Great, or Just Good? According to the authors of that article, Collins did not support the conclusions in Good to Great with rigorous data. In fact, the data as analyzed by Bruce Niendorf and Kristine Beck showed that Collins’ 11 Good-to-Great companies did not produce the stellar long-term financial results he claimed, calling the rest of his conclusions into question.

I see that pattern in this excerpt too. Collins is a great storyteller, and the CEOs he features, such as Darwin E. Smith, come alive on the page. But a rigorous approach to data? Not so much.

For example, examine the Level 5 hierarchy, as detailed in a callout on page 5. What differentiates a Level 5 leader from Level 4, according to Collins, is personal humility, along with professional will. That’s it? Personal humility is the difference? Sorry, I just don’t think that explains it. Plenty of Level 4 leaders have humility as well. Was this measured and quantified in any way? No.

Again, my skepticism is bleeding over from the Niendorf/Beck article. Collins cites the modesty of Coleman M. Mockler, former CEO of Gillette, as “typical of Level 5 leaders.” But did he test this hypothesis? Say, something like:

H₀ : Level 5 leader = profit

H_A : Level 5 leader ≠ profit

That’s a little loose for an actual testable hypothesis, but you get the idea. Collins refers to extensive interviews with multiple executives , but nowhere in this excerpt is there any hard data provided to document Level 5 Leadership really exists as a key factor pushing companies toward greatness. It’s all subjective. Although Collins didn’t prove his case with statistics, at least in this article, I love and support his concept and his values. The world does not need more Al “Chainsaw” Dunlaps. Humility is a good thing.

Guest post on Mary Jo Asmus’ Aspire blog

The greatest leader I’ve ever worked with, bar none, is Lynn S. Atcheson. I was recently asked to write a guest post on leadership and relationships for Mary Jo Asmus’ Aspire-CS blog. Guess who I wrote about?

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Thanks, Lynn, for inspiring me still.

How to make a graceful (and memorable) exit

Dan McCarthy of Great Leadership calls Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show farewell speech “a class act.” Like Dan, I don’t usually stay up late enough for the Tonight Show, nor have I watched Conan O’Brien in any of his other incarnations. So I’m especially glad he called Conan’s video farewell to our attention.

This is leadership at its darkest hour, when plans and dreams come to an abrupt halt and the road ahead is unclear. It’s about the others who depend on him, not his grief.  It’s about looking forward to other possibilities, not looking back at what was lost. He rallies against cynicism, and delivers a message of hope and possibility at a time when he, personally, might have every reason to despair and disparage.

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(As a marketer, I can’t help think that 7-Eleven would be wise to take him up on the parking lots!)

Conan’s farewell reminded me of another graceful exit last week, this one from the reality show Project Runway. Usually, when contestants get booted from talent-based reality shows, the exit-interview spiel goes something along one of these lines: 1) “I’m disappointed in myself. I know I could have done better/worked harder.” 2) “I’m blazingly talented, and the judges just didn’t see it.” 3) “I know I’ll be successful some day, no matter what.”

The de rigueur exit comment is all about me, me, me. Which made Pamela Ptak’s exit a refreshing eye-opener. Pamela didn’t talk about her disappointment at losing from a career perspective – at least not in the edited version that aired on the show. The portion that aired is about 1:03 in:

Pamela was just so human, so appreciative of her fellow competitors, that it resonated far more strongly. She talks about heart, about the real emotional connections that people form when they work together. Caring for others, no matter how cutthroat the competition, is an important leadership component.