“What catapults a company from merely good to truly great? A five-year research project searched for the answer to that question, and its discoveries ought to change the way we think about leadership. The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious. Shy and fearless. They are rare—and unstoppable”. Jim Collins
Ah, more Yins and Yangs! More paradoxes. And all just as relevant for the virtual leader as for the in situ leader.
What are your thoughts about being humble?
It comes back to empowering others to do their best work. As Laozi said: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves”.
That’s the humble leader right there. Enabling others. Creating successors. Recruiting people who are better than him or her. Allowing others to take centre stage, so that they can prove their worth.
Then we can be proud of what we have achieved as a leader and what the collective we have achieved together for the business. Growing the people in order to grow the business. That is something to be truly proud of!
There is another element of humility
That is that we are no longer able to be completely and utterly smart about the future. We cannot predict everything in that future. We sometimes need to admit that we don’t have all the answers. But others might. For example in the pandemic, politicians didn’t have the knowledge, but scientists who had been studying previous pandemics could predict much more because it was their field of expertise. They may not have known everything, but they knew more than the politicians and could interpret the data based on that experience. We cannot all know everything, so we must rely on people who know more than we do.
How humble are you?
How often do you call on others who know more than you? How much pride do you take in resourcing others to be their best? How much pride do you take in the communal results that ensue? Be humble; be proud.
This feels like a good place to end our series. What has really stuck with you? What are you practising? Only through deliberate practice will you change. Only through deliberate practice will you create new habits. Only through deliberate practice will you reap the rewards. So what are you committing to as a result of these posts? Feel free to come back to them for a reminder now and then, or to come up with your practice plan right now.
I’d love to hear your wins. Do get in touch and let me know what experiments you test out and tweak. Remember you don’t need to get it right first time. Practice makes perfect.
Equally, do get in touch if you would like my support and challenge in embracing these new mindsets and skillsets. This is where my energy lies – enabling leaders to create a ripple effect in their organisations, by empowering the people around them.
