The Crybaby’s Guide to Humility

This article is an excerpt from Qualified: How Motherhood Fosters Leadership and Leadership Gets Your Kids to the Bus on Time, to be published in 2019

I spent last night at a delightful dinner with a number of my colleagues, each of whom is a great example of working with people you respect, enjoy and adore. Every person at the table was both an aviation geek and a road warrior, so the conversation turned, as it so often does with this group, to the irrationally emotional response that inevitably comes when watching otherwise terrible movies on airplanes. If a movie got a 19 on Rotten Tomatoes, you would avoid it like the plague in real life, but get on an airplane, where you probably have a pact with your significant other that you won’t watch anything they would like, and suddenly Rough Night deserves an Oscar. So around the table we go telling our stories of irrationally emotional responses to movies and it’s suddenly my turn. My example is one of the genuinely best films I’ve ever seen: Argo. While a smart, thoughtful, and carefully-crafted movie, it’s not really a Hallmark Channel tearjerker. And yet there I sat, on an airplane, not just crying, but sobbing uncontrollably, in hysterics, not just when the hostages are saved at the end (spoiler – sorry!), but at every single moment in which Ben Affleck demonstrates a sense of confidence, courage, or the ability to breathe. I am, my friends, a crier. Make fun of me if you dare; I’ll just cry.

And so, naturally, my journey toward greater humility has been dotted with tears - equally of joy as I have been humbled by opportunities and friendships, and of disappointment, usually in myself. But mostly with each lesson has come wet eyes of gratitude for the chance to learn and grow (though, I confess, not always positive and thankful at or even quite near the moment of growth itself).

I’m not proud of this because I feel like I should be more Gandhi-esque and enlightened, but I think it took me a longer time than normal to really grasp the virtue and nature of humility. Madeline L’Engle’s words helped: Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else. Whether in the moments in which I held my newborn son, unwilling to sleep myself for fear of missing a single precious breath, or in the moments in which a member of my team could hardly breathe because of their fear of failure, the power of disappearing from yourself for the sake of others cannot be underestimated as you lead in your home or personal life. I have seen humility found and practiced well in five ways:

You have been helped, so help…

A few years ago, I ran a two-hour presentation and workshop with our company’s top leadership about what we wanted our brand to be for our employees and for potential candidates. It went, well, fine. A solid B… or a B-… at least it was a passing grade. The next morning, I got an email from one of the most intimidating leaders in the room that said only, “You’re having lunch with me. I have feedback for you.” 

It was 8:30 am and I spent most of the remainder of the morning completely freaking out. I get it, feedback is a gift and all that, but, like, total barf.  

We were on our way out of the office to lunch and bumped into a number of his team members, so I quickly discovered that he had blown off a huge meeting with a bunch of people who were expecting him; he was prioritizing me. I walked the 250ft to the restaurant where we were having lunch repeating to myself my plan: if you just write down everything he says, you won’t cry. That was my strategy.

He shared an hour’s worth of insightful advice for which I am incredibly grateful and which I will never forget. The central theme of the advice hit me at my core: “Get comfortable creating conflict and allowing conflict to happen around you without feeling that you need to control it or peace keep. Conflict is healthier than you think it is and works itself out naturally for constructive, positive results.” He challenged me to thirty days of creating healthy conflict once a day, of picking fights. I had to email him everyday to report on my progress. He shone a light on me that showed my biggest warts and insecurities around pleasing people – or really “awing” people because “pleasing” isn’t even good enough – and told me it was insufficient for my success. The feedback was horrible. It was awesome. It changed me forever.

As powerful a lesson as it was for him to see right through me, assess my weakness to please and awe, and push me toward an antidote, this was not the lesson of that day. What I learned above all is that busy, powerful, important people will make time for whatever they deem most valuable. That day, this leader found me most valuable (I tear up even now as I write this). I will be forever humbled by that knowledge, forever grateful for his crazy belief in me, and forever of the belief that it is my job to be thoughtful about those around me who deserve my investment and committed to giving them my time and energy.

And so it is for us to pay this sort of experience forward. A woman in my Girl Scout world who hasn’t worked outside the home for 18 years is getting a divorce. It’s my decision to determine whether taking time to help her re-enter the workforce is part of my calling or not, but Jesse Jackson said, “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.” Now, in full disclosure, I love Jesse Jackson. My parents took me to see him in 1988 when he was running for president, and he gave my sleeping little sister a kiss on the head so I have a serious soft spot and he’s a bit of a legend in the Waffle household. But I also love how right he is here. If you have been given a gift, have been given a language in which you can communicate that gift, and have a soul standing in front of you who needs that gift, it’s not your job, it’s your honor to make that time to humble yourself to show your warts and share that gift.

You have found courage, so teach courage…

Do you have a heart? (hint: you can tell if sportsball teams with great backstories winning their games makes you cry) If you do, you’re already way ahead on the topic of courage. Silly cowardly lion without a heart and whatnot aside… 

I have told very few people, other than declaring it to all of you right now, that I’m writing this book about the relationship between motherhood and executive leadership and the growth that occurs in each but impacts the other. An in-the-know girlfriend I told asked me if I was going to cover the topic of self-doubt. The friend-in-question is someone who emerged from a childhood led by her drug addicted parents to have a successful career helping companies express themselves strategically while simultaneously being a successful single mom. 

The suggestion made me reflect hard on who I am and my path to get here. I was a single mom for several years with two young kids which meant I had expensive childcare costs, complex elementary school schedules, a great big job, and an ex who was 5 hours away who I had to drive to so I could meet him with the kids on a regular basis. To be honest, I was kind of a train wreck at this whole thing. My girlfriend is an absolute superhero. 

From what I’ve see, especially of single moms, who are the most humble leaders you can find anywhere, there are three things that make you a courageous leader and that span both work and home:

Courageous people understand reality – People who are courageous have the audacity to confront reality head-on, to take off the rose-colored glasses and to begin their analysis of any situation from a far more realistic place than anyone else ever could.

Courageous people seek feedback comfortably – A sense of adventure is accompanied by a sense that everyone on the journey can get better. Maybe it sounds like a country song, but if your girl left you, your dog left you and your truck left you, you are no longer concerned if you didn’t land key message #75 in meeting #12 of the day. You can take that feedback swiftly and graciously and get better with greater speed than some of us who are still sitting in the corner crying about the criticism about our lack of a semicolon on slide #6.

Courageous people know what’s up – Most people who fall into this category are well-acclimated to conflict. Come at them with a question; they have a fact. Come at them with a fact; they have an opinion. Whether in an executive review or a lacrosse team parent debate, people who have spat in the face of fire without shedding a tear have unique value to bring to the table to solve problems both logically and emotionally.

While self-doubt is real, if there is anyone who deserves pride over humility, it’s those who have earned their badge of courage the hard way and model it freely for their co-workers and kids.

You have been shown grace, so give grace…

If you’re anything like me or any other married or partnered human I know, there is no one you have hurt more over the course of your life than your spouse or partner. We can all say it’s the nature of any relationship that has this level of intimacy, but as far as at least I am concerned, it’s the fact that I can be a total jerk and I take it out on him.

A good friend of mine saw my lock screen on my phone and asked me about it.

My lock screen is a picture of my husband, Ryan, and reads, “He showed me the wonders of his love although I was a city under siege. Psalm 31:21.” My girlfriend commented that she couldn’t tell if I meant it more to refer to God or Ryan. My response: “That’s kind of how grace works.” Regardless of your faith in God, Earth, trees, humans or whatever, I am convinced that grace comes from a far bigger force than us and can change the world of those around us. It’s certainly true in my home. I have never imagined such grace as I’ve seen from Ryan to me.

So it’s only fitting that I should turn that knowledge of how powerful grace feels to me to apply it to those in every corner of my life.

A few years ago, a young woman who worked fairly deep in my organization asked me for a 1:1 at the last minute – never a good sign. Despite how technically “junior” she was, she was someone for whom I had a strong affinity and I had really enjoyed watching her grow and being part of her journey. She was as pale as a ghost when I walked into my office and saw her sitting on my couch waiting for me. She had, she shared, shown a lapse in judgment a couple of times over the last several months and had gotten herself into pretty significant legal trouble involving substance issues, none of which involved work. So why should she tell me directly instead of having it come to me through her manager? Because she was was humiliated that she was going to miss several days of work for court dates and then likely community services as a best-case scenario and she cared deeply about how I felt and thought about her – we had spent years investing in our relationship. I had three choices in that moment:

1)     Be super clear that I had a zero-tolerance policy for issues like this and that I expected better from her in the future.

2)     Tell her I appreciated her sharing with me, then deal with the logistics of how we could make this wok really from a functional standpoint.

3)     Peel back my veneer of being the put-together boss’s boss’s boss so show her the broken human I am and extend that grace and humanity to her by sharing my own truths.

Author Brennan Manning, with whom I am obsessed, says that “Impostors are preoccupied with acceptance and approval.” I felt in that moment like the fire hose pinned to the wall with the sign on me: break glass in case of emergency. I knew this was an emergency for this young woman and I needed to break my boss fa?ade no matter how much it bruised my own ego, let go of my need for acceptance and approval, and tell her about my own bad decisions, how I had worked hard to learn from them, and how they had shaped me in powerful ways. This was not about work; this was about my impact on her life. I cried. She cried. She felt accepted, safe and at home. This same young woman, who thrived for several more years on my team before becoming a professor and sharing her wisdom with others, sent me a birthday card for my 40th birthday a few weeks ago and told me that she was forever changed because of that single conversation. 

When we are shown grace, we understand its power and hopefully it transforms us to manage differently, to lead differently, to behave differently at home and at work.

You have been lifted up, so exalt others…

I have few brilliant words to say here beyond the great words of Alice Walker: “’Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility and understanding.” 

Unless you’ve lived your life in an Amazon box (which is totally reasonable given the number of Amazon boxes at my house), you know that, no matter how huge a star you are, your success is built on the backs of others. My success if not mine. It is my husband’s. It is my team’s. It is my nanny/chief of staff’s. It's my friend's. These are the people in my Golden Globe acceptance speech. It really has nothing to do with me.

Today was Sex in the City’s 20th anniversary, and I was impressed with this picture from Charlotte, a.k.a Kristin Davis on Instagram:

Her point of view, even 20 years later, is captured perfectly. It’s not me; it’s all of you. It’s true in every aspect of where you spend your time and energy. If you are pretending it’s not, get over yourself. Normal = healthy supportive community. You’re making it work as a team, so celebrate it. Stop pretending it’s a one-woman show. Be humble enough to know you need help from strong people who are experts in their fields but be proud enough to realize what a genius you are to build a team with this kind of support and expertise.

I have a good girlfriend with a newborn daughter who really challenging at the moment (beautiful and magical but a fussy baby). My friend was winging it on her own until her family and I pushed her to accept help. This is no different from the fact that an SEO expert knows SEO and that a social expert knows Facebook. You’re not going to hire your finance person to run your IT solutions team. A smart leader puts the right talent in the right position – at work and at home. Get over yourself if you think you can do it all or you think we’re going to be any more impressed with your reputation if you didn’t sleep for the last 27 days to prove you could do it by yourself. That’s not good leadership and it’s not good survivorship.

You have been loved selflessly, so show selfless love…

Every night, my 10-year-old daughter and I pick a dream date. I say, in sing-song tones, “What are we going to…” and she replies with equal melody, “…dream about?” Whatever we choose, we meet in our dreams to do just that – a carousel in Paris, a hammock on the beach, meeting her stuffed cheetah, Kayham, in the wild. Night after night, this is our love. Sometimes she just picks cuddling and it’s enough to melt my heart and make me weep yet again. I am humbled every night that she wants to spend her dreams with me.

Sigal Barsade and Olivia A. O’Neill share in the Harvard Business Review the following: “People who worked in a culture where they felt free to express affection, tenderness, caring, and compassion for one another were more satisfied with their jobs, committed to the organization, and [felt more] accountable for their performance.”

If you were to describe your family on its best days, you would call them, “affectionate, tender, caring, and compassionate, committed to each other and accountable for the whole family’s success.” Take all of those words but put the word RADICAL! in front of them to start to see the future more clearly.

But how does this happen at work and at home? The equation is simple for both:

1)     Healthy manager/parent-employee/kid relationships. They say, “people leave managers, not companies,” and Gallup shows that’s true for 50% of US employees vacating their jobs. Getting clear on expectations – from both sides – is key to both parties feeling fulfilled. I say this all the time – until everyone in my life is nauseated – people can’t rise to expectations they don’t know you have. Setting expectations works in all directions of power and is a very powerful tool in all of your relationships. “What does success look like to you?” applies to how you help on a 13-year-old’s algebra test as much as it relates to your 1:1 with our CEO.

2)     Keep it fresh and interesting – Increasingly employees and tween and teens alike are seeking growth for the sake of growth over achievement for the sake of achievement. New initiatives keep them interested and contribute to their feeling of getting better everyday. Winning is great and a powerful tool to encourage and empower teams, but creating fresh, interesting opportunities is the new name of the game to keep people humble but make them inspired.

3)     Stop being a micromanager. Seriously. Just knock it off. If that’s your brand, go read a book. Do a trustfall. Or, like, 18. Then start some yoga classes.

4)     Create challenging tasks that matter – no 24-year-old is curing cancer on their own but giving them the context of how what they’re doing fits into the biggest strategy will turn your millennials into outperformers. And before you get all judgey about millennials, raise your hand if you like to be on the cool projects where you understand the impact you're having? Yeah, I thought so. And if you can’t make something cool and important, you’re just a leader and storyteller who needs to grow or you don't understand the bigger picture yourself which gives you your own opportunity to stay humble and invest in getting better.

Twenty years in the workforce and thirteen as a mother has helped me reach the vulnerable but content place of knowing where I have genuine humility and where I still need work.

Moving to the most simplistic versions of these five humility builders, one can evaluate their own work environment and their own home as follows –

1)     To what extent should I expected coaching and investment in my career from my manager and my peers?

2)     What can I learn from others around me to influence better through influsing courage into my organization?

3)     Where can I build belonging at home or at word by tapping into the grace I’ve experienced myself?

4)     To whom should I show gratitude for regularly? How can I make that gratitude be specific and sincere?

5)     How can I show true, radical love to those around you in every context of your life?

6)     What is it about my kids, my partner, my work or my team that makes me tear up inside and how can I get that become part of my DNA to keep me growing in how I lead?

I, more than anyone reading this, have much to learn on each of these dimensions but I've been humbled throughout my time on this planet to realize that doing these things well, with genuine humility about your own journey, engages members of your team - at work and at home - far more than coming at them with the vanity and veneer of perfection. Do it well and you will need a box of tissues by your side as you to pat your eyes dry from watching them thrive.