Monthly Archives: October 2018

Humility, the hallmark of great leadership

In Jim Collins book, Good to Great,he describes the leaders that turned good companies into great companies,“These leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”They have a drive to succeed and believe that all around them can succeed, but only through everyone performing their best.  He says these leaders have the “humility to grasp the fact that they do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.”

What does humility look like in great leaders? There are three traits that set great leaders apart. And each one is anchored on how they interact with everyone they are leading to success.

Value others.  Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Great leaders care about people and that is why they are followed.  If you want to accomplish great things, then you do it with other people.  You can complete projects using people, or you can complete people using projects.  Think about the lasting impact of not just a successful project, but of also enlisting, encouraging, and empowering people to develop and do their best.

“Humility shows up in the quality of relationships that leaders form with their peers and people that report to them” – Bernd Vogel

Learn from others.  When asked what great leaders say when they’re stumped on a question, Jean Sullivan, founding partner of Starvest Partners replied, “‘I don’t know’ is not an answer.”She wasn’t implying that leaders should know everything or worse pretend to know everything.  Sullivan went on saying, “The correct answer is, ‘I don’t have enough information to answer your question.’”This can lead to clarifying questions to learn more and narrow down the answer, or to asking someone else who does know the answer. Either way a leader needs to be humble enough to admit they don’t know it all.  

“Humility is being open to the ideas of others.”–  Simon Sinek

Give to others.  Legendary artist Pablo Picasso once said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”  Great leaders became great in part due to their significant skill, knowledge, and ability to succeed.  Achieving personal success and recognizing your ability to accomplish great things is a precursor to being able to do even greater things with, and for, others.  Those that are confident in their abilities, seek out opportunity to help others succeed.

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” – C. S. Lewis

Solve the big problems

Analysis paralysis is one way of describing the inability to decide because every detail is not fully known and understood. This is not, however, an excuse to avoid solving big problems. Don’t default to the belief that there must be a difficult solution for what seems to be a difficult problem. There are answers for even the hardest questions, they just have not been discovered yet and are likely simpler than you can imagine. 

First you have to be willing to take on the challenge.  Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is known for his simple explanations for such topics as the big bang, the speed of light, general relativity and dark matter, to name a few.  He obviously didn’t shy away from difficult topics and has said, “The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them.”  You must be willing to challenge yourself to take on the big problems with the goal of find the simple anwswer.

Second you must find the solution to the right problem.   Difficulty often arises in big problems when the problem itself is incorrectly defined.  Solving a symptom of the problem will not ultimately solve the real problem itself.  Albert Einstein said, “The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution.”   He went on to state how he solves the big problems and not fall prey to analysis paralysis, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” 

Lastly you must recognize that perfection equals simplicity.  Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was known for solving the most difficult cases.  In discussing his method for making the outcome look simple, Holmes replied, “If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”Ask yourself what you need to believe for the hypothesis to be correct.  If that is not reasonable than it isn’t the right answer.

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