Leadership Lessons From THE BOOK

Posts tagged: humility

Leaders: Pride or Humility?

Proverbs 11:2 says, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” With pride, we are self centered and believe we have a strength, skill, talent or accomplishment that we have achieved. When we are self centered like this, we can no longer learn because we are so focused on how good we already are. Pride is destructive, there is no doubt about it.

When we are humble, we know it is not because of anything that we have done and we are fully and completely reliant on God for strength, skill, talent and provision or accomplishment – anything good. That is when we have an openness to gain wisdom – only when we take the focus off self and put the focus rightfully on God and how He plans to use the skills He has provided us.

As I look at the proverb quoted above, I find that there is a definitive action that happens depending on the attitude that I have. If I have an attitude of pride, then disgrace will come. Notice the proverb is emphatic – it does not say that disgrace might come, or the odds are better than even it will come, or that it will come on alternating Tuesday’s – it just about guarantees that disgrace will come. It makes me pause and ask the question, is having pride worth the disgrace that will come? Is pumping myself up so I feel better or that others will look highly upon me worth it when I know that at some point, I will encounter disgrace?

If I have an attitude of humility, then wisdom will come. We know from other proverbs that wisdom is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold (2:14); wisdom is supreme (4:7). We also know that fools despise wisdom. Therefore, if we want to have wisdom, one sure way to get it is to have an attitude of humility. Having an attitude of humility is not about being weak or powerless or any of the other negative connotations that are typically associated with being humble. Rather, a attitude of humility is displayed when we truly believe that we must still learn, be open to other ideas, that people all around us are more skilled than we are in certain areas, that we don’t have (or need to have) all the answers.

As a leader, do you desire wisdom? Certainly, the answer is yes. How do you acquire wisdom? One way is to have an attitude of humility. Another is to have an attitude of continued learning from those you can trust. See the post Who Are You Listening To for more ideas on this.

What has been your experience? How do you contrast pride and humility? Have you experienced a time when your attitude of humility has resulted in wisdom? Have you experienced a time when your pride has led to disgrace? Share with others so we can all learn.

Tags: Attitude, Disgrace, Humble, humility, Leadership, pride, Proverbs, wisdom

Leadership Development | billbliss | February 16, 2010 5:32 am | Comments (2)

Overconfidence Can Ruin a Leader

Last week, I attended the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. It was attended by about 13,000 leaders – primarily church leaders, yet business leaders as well. The speakers were great – one talk that I really enjoyed was given by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink and the Tipping Point among others. His talk was entitled “The Mistakes Experts Make” and it was a truly outstanding talk.

During his talk, he asserted that the mistakes experts, and leaders, make can be due to overconfidence. When leaders think they have all the knowledge that is needed to properly address any given situation, they suffer from having too much overconfidence in that information. When leaders are overconfident, they have a tendency to become arrogant. What’s more is that they don’t listen to other information sources around them who may want to provide alternative points of view, or alternative data points that have been either overlooked or just been made available.

Gladwell gave a few good examples of how this overconfidence has played out in live situations. I am sure that you can identify some situations that you are aware of where overconfidence has resulted in large mistakes. I know I can in my own life and business as well.

So what can we, as leaders, do to avoid the overconfidence trap:

•   Make it a habit to always be seeking new information, not just from those we trust, but also from those who know more than we do (and we should have people on our team that know a lot more than we do).
•   Realize that how ever good we are at compiling or gathering information, and processing that information, we can never be good enough, especially when it comes to making major decisions that will impact the lives and livelihood of others.
•   Regardless of how wise Plan A seems to be, always, always have a Plan B and perhaps even a Plan C.
•   Realize that the tools and techniques that got us to where we are today may not be enough or appropriate to get us where we want to be tomorrow. I am not suggesting dishonesty or loosing integrity; I am suggesting that the methods that enabled us to achieve the position we (or our organization) enjoy today will probably not be sufficient for tomorrow.
•   Regularly check your humility meter. Humility will not allow you to be overconfident but pride in your own abilities, strengths and experiences certainly lead to overconfidence.

What comments do you have about overconfidence?

Tags: arrogance, Gladwell, humility, Leadership Development, overconfidence, pride

Leadership Development | billbliss | October 13, 2009 3:38 pm | Comments (3)