The Metiss Group's Blog

According to bestselling author Jim Collins, humility is a key ingredient of Level 5 leadership. His simple formula is Humility + Will = Level 5. “Level 5 leaders are a study in duality; modest and willful, shy and fearless,” says Collins.

Collins is also a noted leadership speaker, collecting over $75,000 per speaking event. As you can imagine, those speaking events attract some very accomplished leaders. One question Collins asks in his sessions is for the leaders in the crowd to raise their hand if they think they are a Level 5 leader. Inevitably many leaders raise their hands. Collins then, much to the leaders’ chagrin, says “a Level 5 leader would never raise their hand.”

Collins’ point is Level 5 leaders with all their humility would never admit they are an accomplished leader; that they are always striving to be better and never satisfied with their performance.

Level 5 leaders look in the mirror during bad times and out the window during good times. Humble leaders are not afraid to seek outside counsel to make their organizations better knowing they don’t have all the answers.

Empower yourself to pursue Level 5 leadership and you and your team will experience greater success.

Parents know it. School teachers know it. Sports coaches know it. Each of us responds differently to various types of mentoring and leadership. One child may need more nurturing while another responds to firm boundaries. Some students learn best by reading while others learn best by writing. Some athletes perform better when individually challenged while others excel in team situations.

Successful leaders – parents, schoolteachers, coaches, business managers – learn how those they are leading are best inspired and customize their leadership approaches accordingly. Often leaders are too concerned about being fair and focus on applying the same leadership practices with each direct report. Treating your team members differently doesn’t mean you are not being fair. In fact, treating everyone similarly could be perceived as unfair.

Empower yourself to understand each of your direct reports’ motivations and needs, apply a leadership approach tailored to those needs, and the team will be more successful.

In their book “Contented Cows Give Better Milk,” Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette research the impact happy employees have on organizations. They found companies with happier employees:

• outgrew peers by 4:1 margin
• earned more than $40 billion than peers
• created more than 800,000 jobs than peers

One of the best ways to create happier employees is for leaders to conduct consistent one-on-one meetings with their direct reports. The frequency and duration of the one-on-ones is at the manager’s discretion, but weekly 30 minute meetings work best. Consistent one-on-ones provide direct reports an opportunity to voice needs and receive praise. The sessions also provide the opportunity to assess goals with the purpose of ensuring culture and happiness are synchronized.  Regular one-on-ones allow the leader to recognize issues and deal with them before they become time-sucking, full-blown problems.

Direct reports who have consistent, dedicated time with their supervisor are much happier with the organization and, more importantly, their supervisor (remember most superstars leave companies because of the poor relationship with their boss). All this happiness leads to increased profitability and growth.

Empower your leaders to conduct consistent one-on-ones and your organization will be more successful.

According to a Harris Interactive study of 23,000 workers, managers and executives:

•  22% of workers focused on organizational goals
•  10% of people have clear, measurable deadline-driven work goals
•  8% of people systematically schedule priorities
•  23% of workers understood organizational strategy and goals
•  60% of worker’s time actually spent working on key goals

If this were applied to a football team of eleven players:

•  Only two would know what the next play was going to be
•  Only two would be focused on executing the next play
•  Only one would know his specific assignment on the next play
•  Only one would be totally committed to the next play
•  Only two would meet their commitments on the next play

The greater the clarity of the mission, the greater the odds of success. Team members must know what is expected of them, in as granular a way as is practical, in order to meet or exceed those expectations.

Empower your teams with clear expectations and you’ll be more successful.

If you Google “importance of trust in teams” you’ll receive about 16,800,000 results. Seems everyone agrees trust is important for high-performing teams. In his book The Speed Of Trust, Stephen Covey says “trust is the one thing that changes everything. If you promote a high-trust environment where you have capable people who do what they say they are going to do, in my experience, anything is possible.”

Psychologists and effective leaders have proven over and over again that trust is gained within a team after team members demonstrate a vulnerability or openness in a safe and supportive environment (remember the classic exercise where someone falls backwards into the arms of team-members). The easiest way for a team to develop trust is to use behavioral assessments.

DISC is a quadrant behavioral model based on the work of Dr. William Marston that examines the behavior of individuals in their environment. Having team members complete a DISC assessment and sharing the results within the team produces a common vulnerability in a secure and productive way. The team benefits by not only developing greater trust but by also understanding how to leverage each team member’s behavioral strengths.

Empower your team with a DISC assessment and the team will be more successful.