Humility

It’s a strange thing

The minute you think you’ve got it,
You’ve lost it.

Have you known leaders like this? In leadership, it really is about being humble and adopting that spirit of servant leadership. It’s been interesting lately as I venture into new territories with blogging and the internet world. There are so many experts out there and sometimes it’s hard to know who to follow and who to listen to. It seems everyone is an expert and some appear to be quite full of themselves. For me, those aren’t the ones I choose to listen to. The ones who have my attention are the ones who are focused more on how to build a relationship and less on themselves.

Leadership is rarely about “I” and always about “us.” It’s amazing how things change when you don’t care who gets credit for a good idea or a successful project. Good leaders tend to none of the credit, and all of the blame. If something goes wrong, then it falls to the leader to take responsibility for that. When sometimes turns out awesome, it was the team who did it.

What happens when we begin to think too highly of ourselves? I believe that’s when leaders lose their followers. People generally don’t want to work with or follow someone who believes they have all the answers and know THE only way to do something. They sure don’t want to follow someone who takes credit for everything.

Sadly, the loss of humility can be what causes great leaders to fail. When someone loses sight of the fact that it isn’t all about them, it can create that downward spiral that is described in Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership (NelsonFree) by Tim Irwin. (This link is an Amazon affiliate link.) We’ve all seen it and it’s pretty ugly to watch that happen to someone.

Does this mean you should think less of yourself and your skills? Of course not. What it does mean is that you develop a mindset that thinks of others first. It makes it all about your audience, about those around you. One of my favorite quotes is “humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself, it just means you think of yourself less.” In the end, that really is what it’s about.

How about you? What examples of humility have you seen in leaders? Please share your thoughts here in the comments section.

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