In an article entitled: “Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve” Jim Collins summarizes some of the findings of his study published in Good to Great, specifically relating to the kind of leadership character found in the most highly successful organizations in the US. You can read a summary of that article here, courtesy of the US Coast Guard.

The greatest leaders combine the paradoxical personal qualities of extreme personal humility and an iron professional will. This is in stark contrast to the currently popular notion of the strong leader as the boastful, outwardly aggressive personality. Famous captains of industry such as Lee Iacocca (Chrysler) and Jack Welch (GE) fall into the category of Level 4 leaders - good, but not great. The difference is in the legacy that they leave. A great leader is not defined by what happens when they are around, but what by what happens after they leave. A good leader creates excellence. A great leader creates a culture of excellence.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, from another angle. Recently Alison gave a class as part of the “Live to SERVE” series at the Sunday Feast here, entitled: “Engage with Detachment”, speaking about the paradox of engaging with detachment. We are used to engaging with attachment, or disengaging when we are not attached.

This idea of detached engagement is at the crux of Level 5 leadership. The Level 5 leader has a paradoxical relationship with their service. They are at once completely detached from it, and prepared to walk away at a moment’s notice, and totally committed to it, prepared to give everything else up for it.

We’re used to people who are so attached that they will never give it up (some wags joked that Iacocca stood for “I Am Chairman Of Chrysler Corporation Always), or else so detached that they don’t put in anything approaching 100% effort.

Understand one thing: a Level 5 leader is a necessary ingredient for a great organization. In every good to great organization Collins’ team discovered a Level 5 leader quietly at the helm. They didn’t start out looking for leadership as the common denominator, in fact Collins initially told them to discount leadership as an explanation as it was too neat, and “don’t all organizations have leadership?”

In fact, good to great organizations have a special type of leadership that distinguishes itself from the leadership found in other organizations that do not reach to greatness.

You can see that Srila Prabhupada embodied this paradox. In fact I read an exact description of this in the latest Transcendental Diary the other day. Hari Sauri prabhu was relating Prabhupada’s pastimes staying with a family in India (I forget where - Agra? family called Agra?). He tells how a group of people came and heard Prabhupada speaking in his room, and that they were impressed by his simultaneous unbreakable conviction in what he was preaching and his own personal humility. Personally humble, professionally fierce - as Prabhupada himself described the ideal preacher: a lion in the chase, a lamb at home.

In Good to Great and the article mentioned above, Jim Collins admits that while they were able to detect and describe the Level 5 leaders and the qualities of Level 5 leadership, they were unable to explain satisfactorily the process of developing Level 5 leadership. The best they could do was to postulate that some people have the potential for it, while others do not, and that the seed of that potential could sprout due to life’s circumstances, resulting in a fully fledged Level 5 leader.

One of the impetuses that Collins postulates as a trigger for Level 5 leadership is a spiritual experience.

I have one story to illustrate this. I saw it on a video about Christian preaching. One preacher was sent to a small town to become the pastor there. He arrived in the afternoon with his wife and children and they checked into a motel. His wife turned to him and said: “Don’t bother unpacking - we’re not staying”. The town was riddled with gangs and methamphetamine production. The streets were in disrepair and the buildings were covered with gang tags.

That night that preacher prayed and prayed, and he felt the Lord telling him that his life’s work was to be there in that town. The next day he went to the local cemetery and purchased a space for his body to be buried in.

I’ve always found that to be an inspiring example. There is one ISKCON preacher in South America who embodies for me this example - His Grace Omkara Krishna Prabhu.

Anyway, at the heart of the Chowpatty temple you find His Holiness Radhanatha Swami, who is well known for his extreme personal humility. And something that is repeated again and again in the booklet that accompanies “The Simple Temple” - you just have to keep trying. They relate how they started and restarted programs various times before they finally got off the ground. That fierce organizational resolve is the influence of a Level 5 leader.

Knowing precisely which programs to commit to with that intensity is something else, and another organizational characteristic described by Collins and modelled in Chowpatty temple…