Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Level 5 Leaders

Power Line: Stand up for Janice Rogers Brown: "As California's Chief Justice has ruefully acknowledged, Justice Puglia was 'a strong personality...not shy of stating his beliefs, nor about challenging others to justify theirs' but surprisingly willing to listen and modify his views. He was, as his long-time colleague Justice Coleman Blease noted: 'formidable' and 'intimidating,' but he had a 'heart of gold.'
...There are similarities in the descriptions of Justice Puglia and President Lincoln that are striking.

In a speech in 1906, Norton Parker Chipman recalled that his friend Abraham Lincoln was 'firm as the granite hills,' yet capable of great patience and forbearance. Carl Sandburg described Lincoln as 'both steel and velvet...hard as rock and soft as the drifting fog. Reading these words caused a shock of recognition, for I had been seeing exactly this sort of paradox and contradiction in the life of Justice Puglia."

This sounds very much like the Level 5 leader described in Jim Collins' brilliant book on leadership: Good to Great.

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