Finding Strength in Humility

Humility doesn’t get much respect in the corporate world. How often do you hear a leader say publicly, “I’m sorry, I got that wrong,” or, “I didn’t do that very well,” or even something as simple as, “I don’t know.”

Now think about a time - if you can remember one - in which your boss apologized for something, accepted responsibility for a misstep or admitted to simply not having an answer to a significant question. Did it make you respect that person less, or more?

As human beings, we tend to choose sides when it comes to qualities such as confidence and humility. Confidence is one of a constellation of qualities - including strength, courage and decisiveness â€" that we tend to admire in our leaders. Simultaneously, we - and they â€" disdain opposite qualities such as meekness, cowardice and timidity.

It’s a false choice. When we identify with a particular strength, the opposite we’re avoiding is almost always negative. For confidence, it’s insecurity or self-doubt. But what happens when we overuse confidence? It turns into arrogance, hubris and even grandiosity. Any strength overused eventually becomes toxic. Excessive honesty becomes cruelty. Tenacity congeals into rigidity. Bias for action can overwhelm thoughtful reflection.

This is where positive opposites serve as a balancing and humanizing role. Humility comes from the Latin word “humilis,” which literally means “low.” It resides just a stone’s throw from “humiliation.” Sure enough, excessive humility eventually softens into obsequiousness and self-subjugation. False humility is even worse: a conscious manipulation covertly aimed at winning praise, often to compensate for unacknowledged feelings of inadequacy.

But genuine humility is a reflection of neither weakness nor insecurity. Instead, it implies a respectful appreciation of the strengths of others, a lack of personal pretension and a more relaxed sense of confidence that doesn’t require external recognition.

In a complex world that so plainly and painfully defies easy answers, humility is also an antidote to overconfidence. It gives leaders permission to accept and acknowledge their limitations, to learn from them and continue to grow and evolve.

No one has captured this paradox for me better than the psychologist James Hillman. “Loving oneself is no easy matter,” he once wrote, “because it means loving all of oneself including the shadow where one is inferior and socially so unacceptable … The cure is a paradox requiring two incommensurables: the moral recognition that these parts of me are burdensome and intolerable and must change, and the loving, laughing acceptance which takes them just as they are, joyfully, forever.”

In one study of leaders, those who expressed the highest opinions of themselves turned out to be the least receptive to criticism or feedback. At the same time, those who reported the highest levels of self-esteem were more likely to “irritate, interrupt and show hostility to others.”

In his book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins wrote that leaders of the most enduringly successful companies were marked by a paradoxical blend of fierce resolve and personal humility. “Level 5” leaders, as he termed them, never look in the mirror to apportion credit, but rather out the window. When it comes to taking responsibility for missteps, they look in the mirror rather than focusing on others.

Humility is a way of acknowledging that none of us stand at the center of the universe. No matter what role we occupy, or how much we know, we don’t have a lock on the answers. A position of authority over others scarcely guarantees that you have real authority.

When leaders openly accept the whole of who they are - for better and for worse - they no longer have to defend their value so vigilantly. I make missteps and mistakes as a leader, and they’re often a reflection of the same overused strengths and blind spots I’ve been struggling with my whole life.

That’s a humbling recognition, and sharing it with others on my team requires vulnerability, which can feel unseemly, uncomfortable and even dangerous.
But when I acknowledge to my colleagues that I’ve fallen short in some way, I can feel them relax their own vigilance.

I don’t need to say out loud that I value confidence and strength. I do need to demonstrate that I also value humility and vulnerability - to embrace these opposites. In the end, the less time we spend protecting our own value, the more time we can spend creating value in the world.

About the Author

Tony Schwartz is the chief executive of the Energy Project and the author, most recently, of “Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Live.” Twitter: @tonyschwartz