Author Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, first documented that transforming a mediocre company into a stellar performer seemed to require a leader who was the polar opposite of the “celebrity CEO” archetype. This type of leader combines tremendous personal determination to do what it takes to achieve success for the organization with a willingness to accept responsibility for failure and to pass along the credit for success to his or her team.

In his bestselling book Leading Quietly, Harvard professor Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. identified key behaviors that successful quiet leaders seem to follow to get results. He distilled these into seven recommendations, among them:
• Don’t kid yourself. Be realistic about what you know—and don’t know—of the situation you face. Accept that you may have to act with uncertain knowledge.
• Trust mixed motives. Recognize that people, including yourself, bring a blend of motivations to their jobs—public-spirited and self-interested. Work with this instead of fighting it.

Daniel Goleman’s recent book, Primal Leadership, suggests that a coaching style of leadership may best describe the rarest—and most essential—qualities of the quiet leader.

“The coaching style is the least-used tool in the leader’s toolkit,” says Goleman, “probably because it doesn’t look like leadership.”

Like a coach, a quiet leader can achieve breakthroughs by asking guided questions rather than giving orders or advice, and by getting to know each member of a team well enough to be able to craft work assignments to best suit where they are and where they’re going.

Yet it’s clear that quiet leadership is not so much about any particular management style as it is an attitude toward work and people—and life. Keeping your ego in check certainly seems to be a prerequisite, as is giving up your ambitions for being on the cover of Fortune.

As Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management studies at McGill University, commented in a recent article on quiet leadership, “Maybe really good management is boring.”