The Humble Leader

There can be a temptation to think about humility, and the other social currencies such as?kindness, pride, fairness, or trust, as somehow peripheral, soft, or discretionary. But to do so may represent a failure of categorisation, of taxonomy, so much as a real difference between these and the so called ‘harder’ skills. If anything, these forces, the ones that bind us, that hold us, that matter to us, are the most human of things, and hence the most important.

When i wrote?The Humble Leader, i was nervous about how it would land. It sits right at the furthest end of my work, far away from the so called ‘sharp’ end. It does not have a strong research base (there is research, but it’s qualitative and subjective), it does not focus on aspects of Organisational Design, of productivity, or of effect, (except in the sense that you cannot be successful without being socially cohesive), and it has precisely no answers.

Instead, i wrote it as a reflection: a guided one, and primarily my own. I share my journey in the hope i can learn from others, or give them a sketch map to explore. But from the start i have described it as fragile work.

Fragile in it’s inception, fragile in execution. Which is probably how it should be.

Whilst humility may not be easily quantified (indeed, may arguably not even be a ‘thing’, so much as a belief), it is nonetheless something that people value, and seek, both for themselves and in others.

And it stands to reason that if we cannot write a course on ‘how to be a humble leader’ (and PLEASE do not try to write this course…), then we will have to find other ways to explore it.

I wrote the book as a guided reflection, partly because of the fragility of the work: possibly my understanding is too fragile to give others, so instead i hope you can construct your own delicate framework!

I am touched that the work has landed well, although i do not discount that people may just be being nice about it. It’s well intentioned, but that in itself is somewhat damning. Do we need humility in leadership? Well, that rather depends upon what we are building.

Can you build a system, and lead it, without humility? I’m sure you can. But should you?

If we wish for our Organisations to be better, to do better, if we wish to build Organisations that are successful because they act in service of people, then we probably do. Because humility is not a weakness, nor is it a luxury. It’s a willingness and ability to look in the mirror and see beyond the superficial. In ourselves and in our systems.

We don’t have to build that type of Organisation, nor do we need to lead it like this, with humility. But to fail to do so may be to build success without legacy, and, worse, to further fracture our social contract.

The Humble Leader is available everywhere,?here: a guided reflection for Social Leadership.