I absolutely love the book, Good to Great by Jim Collins. The book explains leadership through the use of real-life and known companies. The book provides support into how companies have gone from just good to becoming a great company due to their asset of a "Level 5" leader. In chapter 2, when discussing Darwin Smith and his decision to sell the mills of Kimberly-Clark and how much success it brought the company, he states, "I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job." This one sentence reveals Smith's ability to tolerate humility, a trait of a level 5 leader. He recognized that he was not the greatest and that even as a CEO, he did not know all there was to know. His work ethic, even when losing a finger one day on the job or with cancer, Smith truly never stopped. He is an inspiring level 5 leader who channeled his ego away and spent his life building a great company, eventually retiring and leaving the company as its best for the next successor. I did not find it shocking that compensation is not a key lever in making a company great. If you are a true leader, you will and should do what is best for the company first, not yourself. That just goes back to a leader's morals. When you love what you are doing, I feel that money comes secondary. In chapter 4, Collins discusses motivation. He writes, "Not because vision is unimportant, but because expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time." In my hospitality classes, professors spend so much time discussing vision. I agree, vision is important, but as Collin discusses, if you implement findings and facts into your behavior, then you will spend much less time motivating people because facts speak for themselves. Collins then states, "If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated." If people are where they need to be and like what they are doing, there is no question that they will work. I have learned that behavioral leadership, leaders can be taught. However, without the will to lead, then there will be no behavior to suggest that person is a leader. To be a leader, you truly have to have not only the right team members in your organization, but each member must be in the right spot within the organization. When an individual is inspired to work, then they are in the right spot to lead, and I hope to find my "right" place in the workplace one day.
