Confidence in Humility

Bill James was a data scientist before data science was cool. When he started publishing The Bill James Baseball Abstract in 1977, his iconoclastic view of the game’s most important statistics was widely considered heresy. Now, professional teams who don’t employ advanced statistical analytics are woefully behind their competitors. It is an understatement to say that James revolutionized the way baseball is played and understood - in 2006, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people. All because he looked at a problem in a different way.

This isn’t a post about baseball, though. It’s about how humility and confidence coexist in great leaders.

I have this (lengthy) quote from James on the cork board in my office:

"All research begins with ignorance. The ability to focus on what it is that you do not know is critical to doing research. I'm absolutely convinced that none of us understands the world.

I'm not a person that the world irritates, to quote Bill Buckley, but you turn on the radio and in any debate, you've got people who are convinced they know. Liberals, conservatives, Christians, Muslims, people who think Terry Francona [the manager of the Boston Red Sox at the time of the quote] is a genius, those that think he's an idiot. They're all convinced they've got this figured out.

None of them has it figured out. We do not understand the world; the world is billions of times more complicated than our minds.

You can make a useful contribution to a discussion if you can figure out specifically what it is you don't understand and try to work on it. If you try to start from the other end - 'I've got the world figured out and I'm going to explain it to everybody' - maybe there are a lot of people who succeed in doing that, but it doesn't work for me."

I refer to this quote often - it’s a touchstone for me when I’m feeling like I’ve got the world figured out, and a reminder that many of the best solutions to problems come from actively seeking to understand things that elude me. The humility side to the equation seems fairly straightforward.

But in order to be humble enough to admit to not understanding something, and to be seen to be seeking new clarity, leaders have to possess a certain kind of confidence. Too often in the early days of my career as a leader, I thought I had to know everything, that admitting I didn’t have all the answers was a sign of weakness and inexperience. Friends, I made mistakes because my ego was too fragile to show humility.?

Which, ironically, was really humbling.

I became a better leader when I learned to say “I don’t know”, to expect team members to solve problems on their own, and to dig in to learn new things and let our team see me doing so. I learned more, I grew more, and I think I encouraged others to do the same. And as I became willing to show more humility, I gained confidence because results followed - that’s a virtuous circle.

I mentioned great leaders above. I don't think I'm one, but I definitely think I've become a better one because I've learned to be comfortable not having all the answers and seeking first to understand.

For the record, Terry Francona is a genius.