Leadership expert Dan Rock well says the “secret sauce” ingredient that makes great leaders great is humility. Here are Rockwell’s suggestions for practicing humility as a leader.
1. Turn outward and celebrate others.
2. Actively seek and act on feedback.
3. Tell people what you’re learning.
4. Honor those who influence you.
5. Enable others to do what you do.
6. Focus on giving.
7. Acknowledge frailties and weaknesses while still reaching for new heights.
8. Listen.
9. Build relationships.
10. Bring compassion and empathy to challenge.
11. Say “thank you.”
12. Laugh at yourself.
“Think of humility as a practice,” Rockwell says. “Sometimes you feel it. Sometimes you practice it.”
Really good suggestions, Hard to add to things that work. Being humble not only means not being conceited and expressing it, but it also means you do not sell yourself short on your own skills and experience. As leader you need to express your thoughts and ideas, that is also being humble.
I do not like being the focus of attention nor a lot of fanfare on myself. Partly because I am humble and partly because I am successful because I surround myself with productive and dedicated team members and when I am successful, we are all successful.
When I won an award for Administrator of the Year – Technology Leader I was not anxious about being in front of a lot of people and giving a speech. But I was truly grateful and humbled that someone recommended me and I was selected. It is also because I am an introvert.
And in my other posts on being an introvert and reading people as well as being humble, hungry, and smart I go into more detail about them – please read the post as they are insightful.
Adapted from “Secret Sauce Sunday: One Secret from Five World Class Leaders”
by Dan Rockwell. Leadership Freak Blog. December 2017. http://leadershipfreak blog. (Creative Commons BY 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0.)