Humble Leadership and Humanistic Leadership

 The Harvard Business Review had a nice article by Dan Cable about how Humble Leadership Really Works. I liked it so much I wanted to share it here.

https://hbr.org/2018/04/how-humble-leadership-really-works

It ties into something I have been thinking about lately. Something that my son asked about when he asked me how and why I was so confident.

I think humility is an important part of effective and ethical leadership. It is important to understand 

a) that you will make mistakes

b) the only thing worse than making a mistake is not fixing it, and 

c) you don't know what you don't know so it's wise to listen to others.

Many people think of humility as a sign of weekness, but it's actually an indication a hallmark of good leadership and management. 

Want to learn more - check out my online certificate programs: https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/professionaldevelopment/certificateprograms/

Humility - Think of Yourself Less

As a Humanist - I try to be humble. It's hard sometimes. But I came across this really great video by Diane Kucala about humble leadership.

She says, "Humility is NOT thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less OFTEN! Humility is one of 14 secrets to great leadership."

This is great advice and it's a great way to think about humility.  Think of how much better it would be if leaders - actually - listened. I don't think you can be a good leader if you and trying to be front and center.  A good leader pays attentions to the needs of others, to help those others flourish!

I have not read her materials yet - but plan to.  Her website is at: https://blueprintleadership.com/

Humility from a Humanist perspective

For a Humanist, humility is an important part of our approach to happiness. And it has several different uses and dimensions.

Intellectual Humility

We are quick to admit we might be wrong and we are actually self-critical about our own judgements. We do this because we understand that to do and be good our moral reasoning has to be good. And if we make a mistake in our thinking, our moral reasoning will be as flawed as our thinking is. To us, it is better to correct your mistakes than to perpetuate them and we can only do that if we are willing to admit we were wrong.

Interpersonal Humility

We are incapable of really understanding what other people tell us. Everything we know and learn is learned through a distorted lens that is our perception. We make assumptions about other people’s motivations all the time and we are almost always wrong because we base those assumptions on how we are and how we feel and other people aren’t us.

Being interpersonally humble means acknowledging that other people are real and that they don’t have the same experiences as we do but that doesn’t make them any less valid. This particular form of humility helps us to improve our interpersonal relationships and have deeper more meaningful relationships because they aren’t built on our needs and wants, they are more collaborative. This is only possible when you don’t make it all about you all the time.

Interpersonal humility also helps us to be more persuasive with others because of pushing our ideas about what the other person is thinking down other people’s throats, we take the time to learn what it is they actually think and how they are morally motivated and we respond to that reality instead of our assumptions.

Aspirational Humility

Being aware of how insignificant we are on a universal scare also induces a really fabulous form of humility. To quote the Animaniacs – “it’s a great big universe and we’re all really puny.” Our life spans are nothing. We are only alive for a short period of time. Most of the universe existed without us and when we die the universe will continue without us. We aren’t important. At all. Whatever drama you have going on right now, ultimately doesn’t matter. At all. No one is going to remember what was so important to you in a year or 10 years or after you die. Heck, you won’t even be remembered except by some close friends and relatives and when they die, your descendants aren’t likely to remember or think of you. I mean think about it. Do you know who your great great great grandmother was – and what her humor was like and how her food tasted and what she was afraid of?  No. You don’t. Because you didn’t know her.

While a lot of people consider this knowledge of the ultimate futility of their existence to be depressing, for Humanists, it’s freeing. We don’t have to get all worked up about here and now problems and dramas. We can take a step back, remember how silly we are being for being worked up about nothing and then carry on with figuring out how best to fix the problem in the meantime.  It turns out that being able to emotionally distance yourself from your gut emotional reaction really helps you solve problems more effectively.

The other thing aspirational humility does is it reminds us that what is going on here and now matters. We don’t have all the time in the world. We have the limited time we are alive. And if we don’t do what needs to be done now, we aren’t doing it. As Phil Ochs once wrote, “I won’t live proud enough to die when I’m gone, so I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here.”  Every moment is precious. This is the one life we get. We better not waste it.

It’s this last bit that makes the most difference. In the big scheme of things what we do doesn’t really matter. But it matters now and we can choose to live our lives in a way that benefits ourselves and others, or we can give in to despair and hedonism. Aspirational humility teaches us that the struggle to make things better and to make the world better is what matters. It’s what gives our lives meaning and purpose and striving to make the world a better place for ourselves and our fellow humans is what, ultimately brings us happiness.

Truth and Lies

Came across this graphic the other day.  “The only people mad at you for speaking the truth are those who are living a lie. Keep speaking it.”  Being a Humanist and a natural born thinker, my first thought was yeah, but how do you know if you are speaking the truth or not.  Maybe you are the one who is speaking a lie and you just think it’s the truth. and the reason everyone else is mad at you is because you refuse to embrace reality and you are causing all sorts of problems as a result.

Humanists are naturally skeptical. I realize this graphic is meant to inspire people to keep pushing when they think they are right. But we Humanists prefer to actually be right. So, the first thing we do when we encounter opposition to our ideas is not to assume we are on the right track because people are mad. But to find out WHY people are mad at us in the first place. Again, don’t assume you know. You could be wrong.

image: freedigitalphotos.net

It is only after a humbling bit of soul searching, self-reflection of our motives to ensure we aren’t deluding ourselves combined with quite a bit of research to find out if we have our facts straight or not that we can move forward, assuming that we found out that we were indeed right all along. 

So yes, people do get mad at people who speak the truth. But before you assume that you are speaking the truth, double check to  make sure you aren’t actually repeating a damaging lie

Know Your Limits

Image: Phaitoon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I am getting ready to publish a 6 week humanist life skills course. It will cover issues like ethics, responsibility, compassion and critical thinking. I have been teaching this course for a while now and on the last day of my most recent class, one of my students asked about how humanists felt about humility.   I answered that humanists think being humble as an important part of our practice as humanists.  After all, we can never be sure we are right, even with the best of information and we would rather find out we are wrong that continue on in a delusion that we were right.

This got me thinking  though, part of what I like about my class is that every unit of the class builds upon the last. We spend an hour on ethics only to conclude that as strong as humanists ethics are, they are limited by our ability to think well. So the next week we spend an hour talking about the hows and whys of critical thinking, only to realize that it doesn’t matter how well we think, we are always going to be a, to a certain extent, not completely right so we need to temper our thinking with compassion to ensure that we are humble in our conclusions. Then we spend an hour talking about compassion only to realize that as important as compassion is, you will get yourself into trouble if you don’t temper your compassion with responsibility. 

All the major aspects of the Humanist philosophy, in and of themselves, are not sufficient on their own to help you lead a happy and fulfilling life. All are limited in their usefulness.  To be effective, we need to accept our limits and find ways to shore up the limitations in our ethical system and our critical thinking methods and to make sure our compassion is wielded responsibility and that we don’t allow our responsibilities to overwhelm us. In other words, ethics, compassion, reason and responsibility work best when used together because they shore up the limitations in each of the individual elements.

The beauty of Humanism is precisely that it encourages to be realistic and therefore humble. We don’t pretend to know any great truths. We are just trying to do the best we can given the inherent limits places on us by our knowledge and our nature. 

So the next time you are beating yourself up for not being perfect. Take solace in the fact that knowing and accepting your limitations is actually a good thing. 

Religious versus Intellectual Humility

I got an email the other day from someone trying to convert me to Christianity. Very nice email unlike some I get. But one thing about it bothered me. She was talking about how humble she is before god and then goes on to be annoyingly arrogant. It might just be me, but it seems extraordinarily condescending to claim to know god’s will to the point you feel justified in labeling your fellow co-religionists as unworthy. Clearly being humble before god does not necessarily make someone a humble person.

Anyway, to my point. When Humanists talk about the importance of humility, we are talking about intellectual humility. And on behalf of the entire Freethought movement I am going to issue a collective “our bad” for not making this point clear earlier. Being intellectually humble means that regardless of how sure you are that you are right, you are open to being proved wrong. And this is important because religious certitude in addition to being really annoying can also be quite dangerous. The only known antidote for religious certitude is intellectual humility