Humility

Humility in action

Humility is the quality of being humble and means putting the needs of another person before your own, and thinking of others before yourself. It also means not drawing attention to yourself, and it can mean acknowledging that you are not always right.

Developing Humility

For many of us, humility is one of the hardest traits to develop, because it has to start from a recognition that you are not always right, and that you do not have all the answers.

It also requires an acceptance of yourself which many of us find challenging.

It is relatively easy to be humble when you are at the bottom of the tree, as it were: new in a job, or very junior. The more senior you get, however, the more likely you are to have people looking to you for answers, and the more you find yourself believing that you can help.

If you are not careful, you can reach senior positions—just the moment at which you most need humility—believing that you are more or less infallible.

To try to cultivate humility, you may want to try one or more of these activities:

• Spend time listening to others
• A key quality of humbleness is to value others and enable them to be heard. Spending time listening to others, and drawing out their feelings and values, enabling them to express themselves, is a very powerful way to start to understand this.
• It is important to remember that you are not trying to solve their problems, or answer them: just listen and respond to them as a fellow human.
• Practice mindfulness, and focus on the present
• A key part of mindfulness is accepting what is, rather than judging and commenting on it. An important element of humility is accepting yourself with all your faults, rather than judging yourself for your shortcomings. That doesn’t mean you should not strive to improve, but positively, rather than berating yourself for your negative qualities.
• Be grateful for what you have
• In other words, take the time to ‘count your blessings, and be thankful for them. It is easy to get sucked into a negative spiral of wanting more, whether in yourself or externally. Taking time to stop, and remember what you have to be grateful for, is a good way to cultivate a more humble, and positive, frame of mind.
• Ask for help when you need it
• There is, as many of us will ruefully recognize, a form of pride that lies in being able to solve our own problems. Humility, therefore, lies in recognizing when we need help and being able to ask for it appropriately.
• Seek feedback from others on a regular basis
• This is, perhaps, particularly important for leaders, but we can all gain from hearing what others think of us. Take time to ask others to provide feedback, anonymously if necessary, and make it clear that you welcome their opinions. Listen to the feedback openly and then be grateful.