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5 principles of good leadership
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Jim Collins and his research team have done a wonderful job identifying what it takes for a company to go from good to great. I found this book to be extremely interesting and would like to share several of my thoughts.
I agree with Jim Collins when he states that people can develop into level 5 leaders. The main focus of a level 5 leader is not on themselves, but on the company and how they can make it great. People need to find that cause, work, or activity that pulls the level 5 out of them. If you're not doing something that you are passionate about, you can never become a level 5 leader. Level 5 leaders will do whatever it takes to make their company great, and finding that something special you care about will help you in becoming a level 5 leader.
I think most people think of great leaders as very famous, wealthy, charismatic, and powerful. This is probably why many level 5 leaders aren't chosen for top spots in organizations. Many people feel that these big, outspoken, much publicized leaders are going to be the best for an organization. When, as Jim Collins has pointed out, that couldn't be further from the truth.
It's interesting to read about the great leaders discussed in this book and that they are very different from what most people think. Many great leaders are quiet, shy, reserved, and modest. I had never heard of any of the good to great CEO's that Jim Collins talks about in this book. It's too bad they weren't more well known which might have influenced other CEO's to follow some of their methods and ideas to transform more companies to great.
Getting the right people on the bus (and in the right seat), getting the right people off the bus, and then deciding where to drive it are important concepts that the author has frequently referenced. These concepts are essential to a company if they want to become great. A great quote from the book is "People are not your best asset, the right people are."
So how do you know if you have the right people? It starts with the hiring process. I love the idea of hiring outstanding people whenever and wherever you find them, even if you don't have a specific job for them in mind.
Undoubtedly, Leaders can be further broken down into quite a few ways. Leadership roles are not for everyone and can be difficult to obtain. Some people do not want to be a Leader even if he or she has the leadership skills. Being a Leader can be an intimidating role and add a lot of pressure to his or her life. When one takes on a Leader’s position, he or she can become big headed and take advantage of his or her leadership. Rebellious Leaders will lead people into dangerous situations like drug addictions and being placed in jail. Christian Leaders, or disciples, can bring people to Christ, and tha...
Central Theme: The most important trait of a great leader is humility. By definition to be humble means to be modest and free from vanity. Jim Collins explores the idea of paradoxical characteristics that make a Level 5 leader (Collins, p.116). According to Collins a level 5 leader is a person that combines “humility and professional will” (Collins p.116). What that essentially means is that the best leaders are humble and they care about making their business or work the best it can be even after they leave their position. Collins mentioned various leaders that combined traits like shyness, modesty, and calmness in combination with will, fearlessness, determination, and ambition. He also explains that these types of leaders do not motivate through charisma but through discipline and strategy. Some leaders, like Smith, tend to be seen as out of place but in reality their work and their ideas create a boost in a company’s success.
Many people believe that in order to succeed in a business that is having difficulties, it is important to focus on a particular area in order to be better productive in each of them, and be able to reach the goal. Instead, Goldratt and Jonah demonstrates that is important to focus on the company as a whole, but at the same time, it shows that it is incorrectly to only focus in an specific manufacturing department, or one plant, or a department within the plant, because people should not be concerned in local optimums.
Collin’s objective in Good to Great is to show how companies have gone from good to great. Disciplined thought and creating a culture of discipline are the significant components that gave momentum to the companies who have gone from good to great. Collins conducted a research team of students over a span of five years to do research, interviews, and collecting data that would reveal how disciplined thought and action moved companies forward within a time frame of fifteen years. (The eleven good to great companies the research was drawn upon were Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens and Wells Fargo. These were compared with elven other companies that were good but no great)
Most people at some points in their lives are leaders; some people become leaders on a school group project (low profile) or leader of an organization or ...
Leadership is something that has been around since civilization. You would think that an idea so old would be straight forward but, we can see completely different ideas of what a leader, good or bad, should look like. While some of these stories may be fictional, they line up with a historical timeline of expectations. We can also see how the role of a king and how their duties have evolved in real life. The Epic of Gilgamesh shows us how to control your power. In 1 & 2 Samuel, we see what makes a ruler great and obstacles they have to over come. When we read The Theban Plays we saw how smart a ruler had to be to please his people. While all of these leaders may seem great there are plenty of reason that makes them not great. They
Leadership is regularly ignored by speculators/investors. This may be on the grounds that it is difficult to place a quality on subjective parts of an organization (leadership being one), contrasted with quantitative measurements, which are ordinarily followed and much less demanding to analyze between organizations. People with compacted leadership abilities in the business world frequently ascend to official positions, for example, CEO, CFO, COO, president and chairman.
Leaders do not just appear out of thin air and automatically start making great things happen in the world. A leader must learn from prior leaders or role models that they are surrounded by that they look up to. Not everyone can be a leader, only some people have the correct characteristics it takes to lead others in the right direction. Those who do great things, for example volunteering at a homeless shelter, are not leaders. Many people mistake a “great person” as being a leader, which is completely incorrect (Kouzes and Posner, p. 3). While playing an active role in your community is a positive thing it does not make someone a leader of that community. All leaders have a group of people they have inspiration too and that is a good way of determining who your personal leaders are. My mother, brother, and grandfather are my leaders because I have always looked up to them and tried to mimic some of the great things that I have seen them do. My mother has always been an independent women with goals and an action plan to accomplish those set goals. Stephen, my elder brother, is outgoing and tends to have a leveled head when it comes to evaluating stressful situations. My grandfather is the most caring person I know and he is amazing at keeping situations under control in order to please everyone. These are all the qualities I want to combine into my own leadership style. I know I am not a efficient leader of these actions yet, but I plan on growing into this as I more on into my career, fulfill my set goals, and adjust to the curve-balls that life throws at me.
Good to Great: Responding to Change. I think that Jim Collins' book is essential for future entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders in the Philippines. The tips given by the author are useful in the dynamic, ever-changing, and constantly fluctuating business environment of the Philippines. Jim Collins described the kind of leader who can address these changes as a Level 5 leader "a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will." The Level 5 leader is not the "corporate savior" or "turnaround expert". Most of the CEOs of the Good To Great companies as they made the transition were company insiders. They were more concerned about what they could "build, create and contribute" than what they could "get - fame, fortune, adulation, power, whatever". No Ken Lay of Enron or Carly Fiorina of HP, the larger-than-life CEO, led a Good To Great company. This kind of executive is "concerned more with their own reputation for personal greatness" than they are with "setting the company up for success in the next generation". Transformations from Good to Great start when a company finds a CEO who is humble but iron-willed, and who is ambitious for the company, not necessarily for himself or herself.
From what I haven taken from this book, I have come to a conclusion that with a few steps, you can find a way to make your company productive and meet the overall goal of your company. A clear understanding of what your company’s goal is and to be able to use this goal to understand what being productive means in terms of your company. Knowing the measurements that are needed to reach your goal. The ability to try new experiments and be able to brainstorm and talk together with a dedicated team of researchers that want to reach the goal and wont stop experimenting different processes until the end goal is met.
In Good to Great, Jim Collins discusses major key points companies have used to go from a good company to a great one. He did this by discussing seven characteristics companies should listen and absorb to transition from being good to becoming great. These characteristics included: level 5 leadership, first who…then what, confront the brutal facts, the hedgehog concept, a culture of discipline and the flywheel. Companies who can approach these successfully are the ones who enable themselves to separate from other competing companies. Furthermore, the statement Jim Collins said, which caught my attention immediately, was not in these seven characteristics, but in the first chapter of the book.
Throughout history, there have been leaders who are considered as admirable due to positive influences over other individuals. For example, in my opinion, Abraham Lincoln was able to influence the masses of people because he chose to think and behave differently from other leaders before him. When a person is considered as a leader, there are several responsibilities and qualities that will attract others to follow after the teachings that are demonstrated. Leadership can be described as the process for “guiding individuals, groups, and entire organizations in establishing goals and sustaining action to support goals (Shockley-Zalabak, 2015, p. 220). Additionally, each leader will usually have a distinctive
To be a great orator, a visionary and a strategic thinker all make up a good leader, but by having all these traits doesn 't make up for the loss of the other things that a leader should have, like the ability to listen to his people 's need and the ability to think for the better of the nation instead of the power hungry attitude that ambition can led you
...In Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders, (Pashawaria, 2011) the author asks the question, “Of all the bosses you’ve had in your career, how many would you call truly great leaders? For the purpose of this question, a great leader is someone who inspired you to show up every morning and do your best possible work, someone who made you believe in yourself, someone who genuinely cared about your success, and someone whom you wanted to follow willingly.”
When I think of someone who is a great leader I automatically think about current and previous managers I have had over the years, and honestly I cannot say that any of them are the definition of a great leader. So after I looked up many different definitions of a leader all of them basically defined a leader in the same way, someone who leads people. So, a leader does not typically have to be a manager it could be a teacher or a parent. That is when I realize that a great leader has always been right in front of me teaching me great values, and that is my mother.