Humility: The Key to Great Leadership
Takeaway:
Great leaders are oftentimes envisioned as charismatic, bombastic, and inspiring. Humble leaders are rarely these things, but they are the one’s who can have the biggest impact on an organization. To many, this is a contradiction. But, humility is the key to great leadership.
Humility and Leadership:
As I wrote in the “Level 5 Leadership” article, humility is one of the two most important factors in great leadership. The other being possessing an unstoppable will that is used to be ambitious for the organization or the cause. This second factor resonates with many people. But, humility can seem abstract or unimportant.
The essence of humility is not reducing yourself or your own value. Actually, it is better understanding your real value and how you can add that to the whole for a purpose bigger than your own. This self-knowledge is a very important step as it keeps your feet grounded and allows you to apply your own talents, passions, and interests to make their biggest impact.
To do this successfully, one must reduce their own ego and not think of oneself as more important that what one really is. It is easy to build up a personal story of how great and essential you are, but in reality, pretty much everyone is replaceable and organizations that depend on a single person are doomed to struggle. After working abroad in international schools for more than a decade, I have seen absolutely fantastic teachers come and go. But, as one teacher goes, another can be found, even if they are quite different.
Each time someone great leaves an organization there is always a sense of concern about if the next person do the same job. In reality, no, this person cannot. They are different people and likely work in different ways. This can be really good as shifts in how we work can keep us from being stagnant. The differences between the two people can lead to new ideas and innovations. Embrace those differences and do not expect one person to be a duplicate of another. If the departing person was truly irreplaceable, then why did you make it so easy for them to go? Pay them whatever you need to keep them around.
Understanding your worth, just as you evaluate the worth of others, can help keep you humble. I know that I bring a set of skills that are unique to me and have been helpful in the advancement of the division that I work. These skills and experiences allow us to make well-informed decisions as we confront our own successes and areas of growth. However, if I were to decide on my own exactly what we should do and how we do it, I would simply be a failure much more than what would be tolerable. I need the opinions, thoughts, and experiences that others possess to help me in leading teams.
In the end, we humans are finite and cannot be good or great at everything. Understanding that you have certain qualities or talents is what makes you unique and useful to your family, community, and organization. But, also understanding your weaknesses and smallness helps you to know that others can do it better or differently. Embrace the differences and stay humble, you and those around you are better for it.
Summary
Many great leaders, such as Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, attribute their success to those around them. This can seem like false or cheap humility, but when one dives deeper, you can see just how sincere this is. Cook is a phenomenal leader, but he understands that it is the people around him that makes the organization great, not he by himself.
Look at your teams and know that you are only as good as the team that you have. Yes, you can help a team grow, but you yourself are limited in what you can do without them. Understand your value, but follow the words of leadership great, Ken Blanchard - humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Focus on others and give them the praise for the team’s successes and you will begin to see the change that humility can bring.