Great leaders are modest and fiercely determined, not charismatic

Collins's research identified a leadership profile he calls Level 5 Leadership: executives who combine deep personal humility with intense professional will, deflecting credit for success onto their teams while quietly absorbing blame for failures. This contradicted his team's initial expectation of finding larger-than-life, charismatic transformational leaders driving the good-to-great shifts.

He cites Darwin Smith of Kimberly-Clark, an unassuming in-house lawyer who became CEO almost by accident and went on to make the bold decision to sell off the company's original paper mills to focus entirely on consumer products — a decision that looked reckless at the time but proved transformative, executed without fanfare or self-promotion. Collins contrasts this with comparison-company leaders who cultivated personal celebrity, often at the expense of the company's long-term interest.

Takeaway: judge leadership less by charisma and self-promotion and more by quiet, sustained determination paired with genuine humility about credit.