Coaching practices for Jim Collins Leadership

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Jim Collins Leadership, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I keep catching myself making calls based on how they’ll make me look rather than what’s actually best for the thing I’m building
• I keep nailing down the exact plan before I’ve sorted out who’s actually in the boat with me, and then the plan shifts and the wrong people can’t adapt
• I keep lurching from one big new initiative to the next, each one wiping out whatever momentum the last was building, and I’m exhausted with nothing to show
• My team only performs when I’m watching, and I keep bolting on more rules to control it, which just makes everything rigid
• I finally know what I should be focused on, but good opportunities keep landing in my lap and I say yes to all of them

Practices that may help

1. Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
   Jim Collins’ Good to Great research found that the leaders who took companies from good to great shared a paradoxical combination of fierce personal will and deep personal humility — what Collins calls Level 5 Leadership. They channeled ambition into the institution, not themselves, and set up successors for greatness rather than engineering dependence.
2. Channel ambition to the institution, not yourself
   Care more about the organization’s success than your personal legacy.
   Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
3. The Hedgehog Concept
   Jim Collins’s Hedgehog Concept, drawn from his Good to Great research, proposes that enduring excellence comes from focusing on the intersection of three circles: what you can be world-class at, what drives your economic engine, and what you are deeply passionate about. It is a strategic framework derived from systematic study of high-performing companies; its application to individual purpose is widely used but the evidence base is organizational, not individual.
4. Get the right people on the bus before setting direction
   Prioritize who is doing the work before deciding what to do.
   Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
5. Build the flywheel through consistent small pushes
   Great results come from sustained, consistent effort in one direction — not a single dramatic transformation.
   Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
6. Build a culture of discipline, not a disciplinarian culture
   Hire self-disciplined people, then give them freedom within a clear framework.
   Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
7. Ruthlessly prune commitments outside the intersection
   Once the intersection is visible, say no to opportunities — even good ones — that fall outside it.
   The Hedgehog Concept
8. Look out the window for credit, in the mirror for blame
   When things go well, credit others; when things go wrong, look at yourself first.
   Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
9. Apply the Stockdale Paradox to teams and leadership
   As a leader or team member under pressure, model the simultaneous holding of faith and brutal facts — it is contagious in both directions.
   The Stockdale Paradox, Made Practical
10. Commit to the long game the Hedgehog requires
    Expect the intersection to take years to inhabit fully — and protect it against urgency and short-term pressure.
    The Hedgehog Concept

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