Coaching practices for Level 5 Leadership Humility

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Level 5 Leadership Humility, 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
  • When something goes wrong my first move is to find who dropped the ball, and when it goes well I quietly feel it was mostly me
  • I feel like I have to look certain and have all the answers in front of my team, and I’m starting to wonder if that very armor is exactly why none of them will admit when they’re unsure either.
  • I stand up and tell my team what we value, but I’ve started to wonder whether my own choices actually match the words
  • My team only performs when I’m watching, and I keep bolting on more rules to control it, which just makes everything rigid

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. 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
  4. Model vulnerability and uncertainty as a leader to accelerate safety
    Deliberately share your own uncertainties, mistakes, and questions — it gives permission for others to do the same.
    The Four Stages of Psychological Safety
  5. Model the values you expect (idealized influence)
    Become a living example of the values you want your team to hold.
    Transformational Leadership, Made Practical
  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. Develop successors who will surpass you
    Invest in your successor’s success as a deliberate act of institutional ambition.
    Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
  8. Model fallibility — be the first to admit you don’t know
    The leader’s own admitted mistakes set the price of honesty for everyone below them.
    Psychological Safety, Made Practical
  9. Lead with empathy and acceptance
    Accept the person fully even while refusing to accept poor performance.
    Servant Leadership, Made Practical
  10. Match the delegation level to the person’s current competence and confidence
    Over-delegate to someone who isn’t ready and they fail; under-delegate and they stagnate.
    Delegation Levels, Made Practical

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