Level Five Associates

Level Five Associates We assist our clients in building cultures of excellence characterized by decentralization and empowerment.

We will assist our clients in building cultures of excellence characterized by decentralization and empowerment. Our vision is to utilize over eight collective decades of military and corporate lessons learned and experience to improve a company’s performance relative to profitability, market share, and team member satisfaction. We understand what it takes to implement change management and can as

sist our clients in the hard work to “turn the battleship”. We will accomplish this vision with a combination of keynote addresses to spark interest and passion, workshops and seminars to further develop our “Big Six Leadership” principles, leadership development programs, and assistance with strategic planning. Learn more about becoming a Level Five Leader by reading our blog here: http://www.levelfiveassociates.com/category/blog/

I almost cut this line from The Power of Being All In because it felt too simple. "Our leaders must be engaged and commi...
06/18/2026

I almost cut this line from The Power of Being All In because it felt too simple.

"Our leaders must be engaged and committed to building trust within and among their teams, not just between themselves and each person who reports to them."

Most leaders never make that distinction. They think about trust as one relationship at a time. Leader to employee. Keep your word, show up, give credit where it belongs, and people learn they can rely on you. That part most leaders already do well.

Here's the problem. I can have a deeply trusting relationship with every person on a team of ten and still have ten separate relationships that never connect into anything bigger. Take me out of the room and the whole thing falls apart, because I was the structure holding it together.

Real teams need trust between the leader and each person, trust between teammates working side by side, and trust in the team as a whole, the kind where someone outside the team says "give it to them, they'll get it done" without naming a single person.

That third kind is the one almost nobody builds on purpose.

I wrote about how to build all three this week. I'd love to hear which one, trust between you and your people, trust within your team, or trust among your team as a whole, you'd say is weakest right now. Let's talk about it in the comments.

Enjoy the journey!

When my son attended West Point, the attrition rate had fallen to less than 20 percent. When I was a cadet, it was over ...
06/16/2026

When my son attended West Point, the attrition rate had fallen to less than 20 percent. When I was a cadet, it was over 40.

The mission had not softened. The standards had not dropped. What changed was the institution's fundamental relationship with the people inside it.

West Point stopped trying to identify who could withstand being broken down and started investing in developing leaders from the ground up. That shift took years. But what came out on the other side was an institution where cadets felt genuinely invested in, not simply tested to see if they deserved to be there.

That is what belonging actually looks like. Not comfort. Not the removal of challenge. Investment.

Here is what makes this so urgent right now: recent research shows that only one in four employees reports feeling genuinely connected to their organizational culture.

One in four.

The informal interactions that once generated that connectedness almost automatically, the shared spaces, the hallway conversations, the daily proximity, those are largely gone for millions of workers. Leaders can no longer assume connectedness exists. They have to build it deliberately, or it simply will not be there.

This week I go deeper on what building belonging actually requires in today's hybrid and dispersed work environments, including a specific tool called Power Questions that any leader can put to work immediately. The link is in the comments.

I'd love to hear where you see belonging working inside your organization, and where you see it quietly breaking down. Leave a comment below and let's talk about it.

Enjoy the journey!

A young technician was finishing up his last repair of the day when his manager stopped to ask what he had gotten done.H...
06/09/2026

A young technician was finishing up his last repair of the day when his manager stopped to ask what he had gotten done.

He could have said he fixed nine cars. That would have been accurate.

Instead he said, "I made nine families' lives safer today."

Same job. Same outcome. Completely different relationship to the work.

That is what a Level Five Culture of Commitment looks like from the inside. Not a policy. Not a compliance system. A team member who is genuinely all in because someone took the time to help him understand why his work mattered.

Here is the sobering reality: research shows that only about 30 percent of employees are truly all in at work. That means 70 percent are somewhere in the middle or checked out entirely. The organizations that close that gap do not do it by accident. They do it through deliberate, sustained leadership that earns buy-in every single day.

In this week's article I walk through what the Level Five Culture of Commitment actually looks like in practice, and the specific leadership behaviors that separate organizations that sustain it from those that plateau just short of it. The link is in the comments.

I'd love to hear where you think your organization sits on that five-level scale right now. Leave a comment below and let's talk about it.

Enjoy the journey!

Aetna was losing $1 million a day before its leadership made a deliberate decision to transform its culture. The result ...
06/02/2026

Aetna was losing $1 million a day before its leadership made a deliberate decision to transform its culture. The result was a $1.7 billion ROI and an organization that had grown into a Level 4, Coalition of the Willing culture, where a majority of team members were genuinely invested in a shared mission.

That is a remarkable turnaround. It is also exactly the point where many organizations stop.

A Level 4 culture is a real achievement. People are aligned, leaders are developing their successors, and the mission is understood. But alignment and commitment are not the same thing. In a Level 4 culture, most people want the organization to succeed. In a Level 5, We're All In culture, every team member sees their own success and fulfillment as inseparable from the mission. That final climb is where lasting competitive advantage lives.

I'd love to hear whether you've seen an organization stall at that Level 4 plateau and what you think kept them from making the climb. Leave a comment below and let's talk about it.

Read the full article in the link in the comments.

Enjoy the journey!

Most organizations are not broken. They are stuck.They have good people. They have individuals who care deeply about the...
05/26/2026

Most organizations are not broken. They are stuck.

They have good people. They have individuals who care deeply about the Mission and want to build something meaningful. But those people are isolated, and that isolation is the defining characteristic of what I call a Points of Light Culture.

In We're All In, I describe this as Level 3 in the five-level culture hierarchy. A few individuals genuinely align with the organization's values, but most are simply doing their jobs and performing the associated tasks. The light is real. It just is not strong enough yet to define the whole organization.

The tension at this level is constant. The people who want more are pushing forward. The culture quietly pulls them back. And over time, the culture usually wins. Your best people leave, not because they lack commitment, but because the organization never fully commits to them. They are given just enough opportunity to stay engaged, but not enough to stay invested.

If you are leading at this level, the answer is not to find better people. You likely already have them. The answer is to build an environment where the people you have can consistently perform at their best. That starts with a clear Mission your team genuinely believes in, continues with the trust and empowerment to act on it, and requires the discipline to follow through when the pressure is on.

The opportunity is real. So is the cost of waiting.

Have you ever led or worked in a Points of Light Culture? I'd love to hear what you observed. Drop a comment below and let's talk about it.

Click the link in the comments to read the full article.

Enjoy the journey!

Most leaders believe leadership is about direction. Give clear instructions, enforce the standards, and people will foll...
05/22/2026

Most leaders believe leadership is about direction. Give clear instructions, enforce the standards, and people will follow.

That works in a culture of compliance. It does not work if you want commitment.

Early in my career, I operated exactly that way. It took some hard lessons, including walking into a manufacturing company two weeks after retiring from the Army and discovering a culture that was surviving the system rather than believing in it, to understand that the real question was never "What should my team do?" It was "Who am I as a leader?"

That question is uncomfortable. It forces clarity. It forces accountability. It requires you to define what you actually stand for, not what sounds good in a meeting.

A Personal Leadership Philosophy is not a theoretical exercise. It is a written commitment to how you lead, how you make decisions, and how you show up when it matters most. When you share it openly with your team, you create a level of transparency that most organizations never reach.
From that foundation, your Mission becomes clearer, your standards become real, and your culture begins the journey from compliance to commitment.

This is not a quick fix. It is a long game. But it is the difference between managing people and leading them.

I'd love to hear how you think about your own leadership identity. Drop a comment below and let's talk about it.

Click the link in the comments to read the full article.

Enjoy the journey!

A Follower Culture is one of the hardest problems to diagnose because it often looks healthy on the surface. The numbers...
05/19/2026

A Follower Culture is one of the hardest problems to diagnose because it often looks healthy on the surface.

The numbers are acceptable.
People show up.
Work gets done.

But when direction is unclear, initiative disappears with it. And the people with the most to give quietly stop giving it.

In We're All In, I describe this as Level 2 in the five-level culture hierarchy, and the path out of it starts with one shift: sharing intent rather than only issuing instructions.

Read this week's article to see how the Follower Culture hollows out an organization from the inside, and what it takes to move past it.

You will find the link in the comments.

Most leadership problems are not time problems. They are energy problems.Too many executives try to protect margins by w...
05/15/2026

Most leadership problems are not time problems. They are energy problems.

Too many executives try to protect margins by working longer hours, only to make slower decisions, miss critical signals, and create costly mistakes in the process. Burnout does not stay personal. It moves into your culture, and your team feels it before you ever recognize it in yourself.

One of the most practical tools I have carried with me from the Army into every corporate engagement is the After-Action Review. Five honest questions, no blame, and a clear commitment to do better. What was the plan? What actually happened? What went well? What fell short? And based on what we learned, what will we fix, by when, and who owns it?

That discipline, applied consistently, is how resilient organizations learn without blame and improve with precision.

I'd love to hear how your team processes lessons after a critical project or setback. Leave a comment below and let's talk about it.

Click the link in the comments to read the full article.

Enjoy the journey!

Most CEOs operate in a dangerous vacuum.The higher you climb, the more people filter what they tell you. They soften the...
05/06/2026

Most CEOs operate in a dangerous vacuum.

The higher you climb, the more people filter what they tell you. They soften the hard truths. They tell you what they think you want to hear. And over time, that gap between reality and what reaches your desk becomes a serious liability.

In the Army, we had a structural solution for this: the battle buddy system. Your battle buddy watched your blind spots and told you the truth, even when it was uncomfortable. Not because it was easy, but because the mission required it.

When I transitioned to the corporate world, I found something very different. Senior leaders surrounded by well-meaning people who had quietly learned that honesty carried risk. That environment makes clear thinking harder, decisions slower, and problems invisible until they become crises.

Every executive I've worked with benefits from what I call a corporate battle buddy. A trusted advisor with no competing agenda, no organizational loyalty to protect, and no filter on what they tell you. Someone who helps you hold your direction through market turbulence, not just when conditions are favorable.

I'd love to hear whether you have someone in your corner who tells you the unfiltered truth. Leave a comment below and let's talk about it.

Read the full article at the link in the comments to learn how to identify the right trusted advisor for your organization.

Enjoy the journey!

In 2012, the heavily favored Australian Olympic swim team left London with just one gold medal and a toxic culture consu...
04/28/2026

In 2012, the heavily favored Australian Olympic swim team left London with just one gold medal and a toxic culture consuming them from within.

Their coaches assumed they had a high-performing team. The gap between what leaders assume about their culture and what is actually happening on the floor is where organizations quietly fail.

In my latest article I walk through the Five Levels of Culture, from Level 1, the Nametag Culture, to Level 5, the We're All In culture where every team member is fully committed to each other and to a mission that matters. Most senior leaders believe they are at a Level 4 or 5. The honest assessment often tells a different story.

I'd love to hear where you think your organization truly sits on that spectrum and what made you realize it. Leave a comment below and let's talk about it.

Read the full framework in the link in the comments.

Enjoy the journey!

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