In my ongoing multiple series of blogs, I’ve described the importance of developing leaders in your organization, with the goal of reaching Level 5 leadership. However, there’s an important distinction between Level 5 leadership and a Level 5 culture. Just because you have a corps of strong individual leaders, it does not mean that they are … Read more
The development of strong mutual accountability is one of the most significant stages of the cultural development of an organization. Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright describe the stages of accountability and explain how we, as people, are essentially tribal in their book, Tribal Leadership. The authors developed the book as the result of … Read more
I didn’t always understand what a great culture looked like. In fact, as a young West Point cadet and later as an Army officer, I only had a vague notion of what a culture was at all. We had a set way of doing things, to be sure, but it was pretty much taken for … Read more
By now, you’ve seen the term Level 5 used a lot around here. It’s even in our name! You might be wondering what we mean by Level 5. Here’s some explanation. Over the course of four decades, I’ve been exposed to each of the five levels of culture described below. For brevity’s sake, I’ve given … Read more
You may have encountered this situation before: you’re in a meeting, and the team leader seems to be using it as an opportunity to remind everyone who is running things, dominating the conversation and setting the agenda without any consultation. Maybe you haven’t been part of a situation quite as severe as that, but it … Read more
Listening can feel harder to do than ever. There’s always going to be outside distractions. Emails, texts, meetings, presentations, it can seem to go on and on. It can be easy to get lost in a sea of noise. How do we become better listeners? One tool to do so is called the backbrief. The … Read more
