On Intellectual Humility

Over the past 6 months I've had the unique opportunity to build out a worldwide commercial and consumer sales team from the ground up. One of the things that kept me up at night was onboarding a team that would not only integrate well to the strong culture here at Qualcomm but add to it. I found myself reflecting on the culture of the strong teams I had been a part of and led at Apple.

Getting culture right is a complex, multi-faceted balance of behaviors, interactions, common experiences, and common goals (to name a few of the facets that comprise culture). Yet as I was looking back through the past two decades, I found some cultural best practices and common foundational elements that were core to the highest performing teams.

One that came to the forefront is intellectual humility.

It's a universal maxim that people want to work with other intelligent people, and that leaders should hire people more intelligent than themselves. Steve Jobs referred to these as A-players. Unfortunately it's not as easy as going out and finding the most intelligent people and putting them on a team - you have to make sure they are going to work well with each other, have diverse view points, apply that collective intelligence, and translate it into results. Said simply, intelligence doesn't always guarantee a strong team player. The challenge is that intelligent people have likely been fairly successful over their careers and have likely developed a healthy sense of ego - it's also a universal maxim that people don't want to work with self-centered ego maniacs. Finding and building a highly intellectual team is about striking the balance between intelligence and ego (because a little bit of ego manifested as confidence is a good thing and can help a team push through challenges).

To help illustrate, let's start with a simple fly-wheel:

 Working hard and working smart produce results, highly intelligent people assess those results, adapt, and eventually that energy turns into success. Success rewards the initial behavior and the cycle repeats. As long as the energy repeats in this pattern, people, and more importantly teams can sustain extended periods of success.

 Unfortunately, when ego creeps in, it can funnel energy away from this cycle. Perhaps the individual thinks the hard work in front of them is beneath them now that they have attained a certain level of success. Perhaps they think they're smarter, faster, or better than the rest of the team. As ego creeps in it pulls energy away from the team and draws it to the individual - often isolating that individual from the team. Once isolated, they are no longer contributing to the flywheel or adding to the collective intelligence.

For leaders ego is something you should be actively screening for in new recruits and actively talking about with your team. You can usually spot ego relatively quickly if you are actively looking for it:

• The individual talks about the accomplishments of their team as their own (Lot's of "I" v. "we")
• The individual is overly proud of previous accomplishments and not adapting or pursuing the work in front of them
• Any tone or manner of condescension usually means ego is lurking beneath

 And once recognized here are some great resources to keep ego in check:

• Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday - One of the best resources on keeping ego in check. Filled with great historical examples and pragmatic advice on how to set ego aside to grow and be successful. It's on the annual reading list.
• Leadership and Self Deception: Getting out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute - This is our sales leader's favorite book of all time. It has been my most recommended book since I read it. Do yourself a favor and buy a hard copy. You're in for a treat. It's written like a story and is progressive so I don't want to spoil the plot.
• Multipliers by Liz Wiseman - This is an absolute must for leaders. It shows how to lead when you have put your ego aside to get the most from your team. A great motivator for putting your ego aside and multiplying the strengths of others.

Intellectual humility is one of the main reasons I decided to work for Qualcomm. I'm not sure if it is such a strong part of the culture because of it's academic roots or the fact that the leadership team has had to navigate some tough obstacles. Whatever the reason, it permeates from the top (just listen to the way Cristiano talks about our organization in this podcast) and has created an organization of highly intelligent people that are able to set their ego aside to pursue the mission of the company.

This new sales team has a strong foundation of intellectual humility and it will be something we'll continue to work at - success breeds fertile ground for ego and ego needs constant trimming. Better you to do the trimming than the inventible fall from grace or the isolation from your team. As a mentor once taught me, "Everyone sweeps the floor."