As I was reading Melody Wilding’s recent Harvard Business Review article titled “Navigating the Jump from Manager to Executive,” I found myself pausing more than once. Not because the material was unfamiliar, but because it struck a personal chord. Over the past fifteen years, I have been advocating the principles of Jim Collins’ Level 5 Leadership across universities, boardrooms, and mentoring sessions. And yet, here was a new voice, precise, contemporary, and empathetic, reminding us that the journey from being a competent manager to becoming a true executive is not a promotion, but a profound personal transformation.
Melody Wilding’s essay is especially valuable because it brings into the light the often-unspoken emotional and behavioural pivots required at this stage of leadership evolution. She lays out three shifts that are deceptively simple to read, yet profoundly difficult to internalize:
- From expert to coach: Most managers reach their positions by being good at what they do. They are subject-matter experts, problem-solvers, and go-to people for answers. But when they step into an executive role, something paradoxical happens. They must now stop answering and start asking. They must stop doing and start enabling. The executive is no longer measured by how much they know, but by how effectively they can bring out the best in others.
- From execution to enabling impact through others: Results still matter, but they are no longer yours to deliver alone. In fact, if you are still the one delivering them directly, you are probably failing in your new role. The hallmark of executive presence lies in multiplicity. The goal is not to achieve, but to orchestrate achievement at scale.
- From oversight to architecting scalable systems: At this level, leadership becomes infrastructural. One must move beyond firefighting and begin laying down pipelines that will outlast one’s tenure. Culture, process, succession planning, communication frameworks. These are the legacies of true executives.
Each of these steps demands not only a new skillset, but a rewiring of the very instincts that once made one successful. Melody’s insights are not only instructive but deeply humane. She understands that such systems are not mechanical. They are organic, shaped by the emotional clarity and philosophical coherence of the person building them.
As I was reflecting on these ideas, my thoughts naturally turned to Jim Collins and his magnum opus, “Good to Great.” For more than a decade and a half, I have found myself returning to his concept of Level 5 Leadership, often with a sense of reverence. Collins defines the Level 5 leader as someone who combines personal humility with fierce professional will. At first glance, it appears to be a contradiction. In practice, it is a rare alchemy.
Collins outlines five levels in the hierarchy of leadership:
- Level 1: Highly capable individual – makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.
- Level 2: Contributing team member – contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others.
- Level 3: Competent manager – organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.
- Level 4: Effective leader – catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision; stimulates the group to high performance standards.
- Level 5: Executive – builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility and professional will.
While Melody speaks to the necessary behavioural and psychological shifts of the modern executive, Collins offers a moral and philosophical map of what great leadership looks like from within. His Level 5 leader is not the charismatic commander, but the quiet builder. Not the one who seeks the spotlight, but the one who places the mirror outside when success comes, and inside when failure occurs. There is a timeless stillness in that imagery, almost meditative.
What links Wilding and Collins is not method, but essence. Both describe leadership as a renunciation of ego. One demands self-awareness, the other demands self-erasure. Together, they draw the full arc of transformation, from capability to character.
I must also confess that as I read these reflections on executive leadership, I could not help but think about a curious reversal I often observe in Indian corporate culture. It is not uncommon to find juniors with executive titles, such as Assistant Vice Presidents or Deputy General Managers, while seniors, often far more accomplished, continue to hold the title of Manager. It is a hierarchy turned upside down by nomenclature, where the title precedes the transformation, rather than following it.
In such environments, one is often left wondering: who is truly the executive? The person with the designation, or the person with the depth? Titles can be bestowed in performance appraisals, but executive presence, as both Melody and Collins remind us, must be cultivated, sometimes painfully, always patiently.
I have seen this inversion play out in boardrooms and family-run businesses alike. The obsession with titles often masks a deeper insecurity, a hunger for validation, a discomfort with ambiguity. But the true executive is not seeking certainty. He or she is building structures that can hold ambiguity. The true executive is not obsessed with control, but with trust. The true executive, as Collins writes, is someone who channels ambition into the institution, not the self.
There is something sublime in that idea. That you can be determined, relentless, and exacting, and yet not self-serving. That you can lead without dominating. That you can succeed without shouting. This paradox sits at the heart of every great leader I have admired.
I remember a conversation I had years ago with a dairy entrepreneur in India. He had built his business over decades, from a two-village collection route to a pan-state brand. I asked him what his biggest leadership lesson was. He smiled and said, “To let others grow beyond you.” It reminded me, almost uncannily, of Collins’ parable of the window and the mirror. And now, rereading Wilding, I realise that his wisdom was not just philosophical. It was operational. He had stepped away from being the expert, had built a team that ran without him, and had embedded values that scaled better than instructions.
Therein lies the challenge, and the grace, of executive leadership. It is not a destination, but a dissolution. One must dissolve the need to be indispensable. One must dissolve the impulse to intervene. One must dissolve the narrative of the self.
I write this today as a tribute. To Melody Wilding, for offering a sharp, compassionate guide to the lived experience of leadership evolution. And to Jim Collins, for giving us a lodestar by which to measure our inner growth. But I also write this as a mirror, to myself, and perhaps to many others. In moments of transition, it is tempting to focus on tactics. But transformation, as both these thinkers remind us, is not a tactic. It is a letting go.
As I continue to speak with young professionals, mid-career wanderers, and CXOs navigating succession and uncertainty, I find myself returning to a simple question: What are you building that will outlive you? The answer, if honest, often reveals whether one is still a manager, or has begun the quiet, lifelong journey of becoming an executive.
The path is not linear. Nor is it always visible. But it is real. And those who walk it, gently, firmly, silently, leave footprints that others may one day follow, without ever knowing their names.
That, to me, is the highest form of leadership.
Author: Rajiv Mitra Business Leader | Strategic Thinker | Advocate for India’s Global Economic Leadership
References: 1. Good to Great – Jim Collins 2. Navigating the Jump from Manager to Executive – Melody Wilding
