In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins lays out strong evidence that effective leaders possess a paradoxical mix of humility and professional will. While driven to achieve, he says, successful leaders downplay their personal contributions and attribute their ultimate success to a combination of good luck and the invaluable support and great talents of the people around them.
As important as humility is to effective leadership, most of us don’t identify it as a leadership quality and it is often neglected as a topic in leadership development programs. In our culture where self-confidence and self-promotion are highly valued, we often mistake humility as being non-assertive, indecisive, and weak.
The humility Jim Collins talks about is none of that. Instead, it is a balanced way of seeing ourselves that recognizes both our talents and our limitations and exaggerates neither. In leadership, the competitive advantage it brings is the ability to view things realistically, stay open to new ideas, enlist the help of people with complementary skills, and recognize and reward the contributions of others. It is a magnetic human quality.
Humility can’t be faked (for long), so how do we nurture it in ourselves? There is no test for humility and no 5-step program to develop it. However, understanding its link to how and why we perceive ourselves the way we do is an important key.
A number of studies have shown that we have a natural tendency to bolster our sense of self-worth by seeing ourselves in a flattering light. We see this most obviously in young people, who often possess a sense of invincibility and a certainty that they have it all figured out. As they grow older, they begin to realize just how much they don’t know and can’t do. The more skilled and knowledgeable they became at anything in life – professionally, personally, and even recreationally – the more realistic and humble they became about their limitations in those areas.
This experience is normal and there’s a name for it – the Dunning Kruger effect. Basically, it means that the more competent and knowledgeable we become, the more realistic we are about two things: 1) what it takes to achieve mastery, and 2) where we stand on the continuum.
Since humility grows with knowledge, experience, and training, the implications for leadership development are simple: to reach our full potential as leaders, we must make leadership development an on-going, lifelong endeavor. To nurture a more humble self, we must always be working on something.
There is no guarantee that being humble will ensure your success as a leader. We just know – as Jim Collins has documented well – that it is present in the best of them.
