The Ultimate Pursuit of Leadership isn’t Success
The ultimate pursuit of leadership is humility, not success.
The more I think about humility, the less I know about it. The more I pursue humility, the more it escapes my grasp.
Everything good in leadership begins with humility.
The 7 seductions of arrogance:
#1. Others need to change before you.
#2. Your life is miserable because of others. Arrogance takes offense quickly, easily, and often.
#3. You know the things others should do. Arrogance listens to answer and solve. Arrogance loves to fix people.
Humility changes itself before working to change others. (You’ll be busy if you focus first on changing yourself.)
#4. Your service exceeds their service. Arrogance keeps score.
Arrogance needs appreciation and respect to keep serving.
#5. Faults in others encourage you to feel superior. Arrogance whispers, “I’m better than,” when others fall short.
Humility enjoys the strength of others and celebrates their success.
Arrogance finds someone who is less capable as a standard of comparison. That leader doesn’t do weekly check-ins. You’re so awesome because you frequently check-in with your team.
#6. Humility is achieved in private.
Humility is always pursued in connection with others. It’s personal, not simply private acts of service. Beware the superiority of serving people you don’t like in impersonal ways. It puffs you up.
#7. The ultimate seduction of arrogance is others need it more than you.
Arrogance justifies itself with the faults of others. The faults of others exempt arrogance from service.
Humility:
Humility isn’t victimhood. Arrogance feels like a victim when it’s under-appreciated. Arrogance says, “I deserve better.” Feeling like a victim is self-protective arrogance.
Humility has backbone. Arrogance sacrifices values on the altar of status. Humility holds to values when it’s painful, dangerous, and costly.
Humility speaks truth to power because it doesn’t need approval from power.
What do arrogant leaders do?
How might you pursue and practice humility today?
Dan,
Your posts have the most impeccable timing. I was in a coaching session with a Supervisor reporting to me and her staff yesterday as I was trying to get the staff member to understand that other staff do not make mistakes just to irritate her. If some staff make innocent mistakes she totally loses all patience with them. This is in spite of the fact that her performance is not exactly perfect and I would likewise not anyone yelling at her over an inadvertent error.. I tried to get across to her that everyone makes mistakes, including her, and would she want someone yelling at her or going to her supervisor? I strive to get everyone to function as a team and help each other but sometimes this one staff just goes off. Like you said people put down or attack others to make themselves feel superior, but sometimes they are living in a glass house and not realizing it either.
thanks for your inspiring posts!
This is one of your best. Makes me say “Ouch”. This is true for me: Arrogance keeps score. It is hard to die to self.
And this is true for me: Arrogance whispers, “I’m better than,” when others fall short. At least I think it if I don’t say it.
This is a keen insight: Arrogance feels like a victim when it’s under-appreciated. Arrogance says, “I deserve better.” Feeling like a victim is self-protective arrogance. Self-protective arrogance. I needed this today [and everyday]. I need to continually put others first – my wife, children, students, congregants, neighbors.
Pete, it’s like you took the words right out of my head. I too had an “ouch” response and see myself in so many of these arrogant thoughts. I don’t act on them regularly but I do harbour bad feelings. Thanks to Dan’s post, now I recognize these arrogant thoughts and can realign them to my values.
Thanks, Dan! This one hurt…I find myself in too many of the arrogance descriptions and nowhere near enough of the humility descriptions. I’m posting this in several places that I spend time so that I can remind myself to stop when I see myself going there.
Great post. Thank you.
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My Dan,
We who have indulged in multiple quantities of “Humble Pie” over they years know all to well that we are all created equal, yet think we are not! We are capable of making errors! As human beings we are not perfect, “as we think we know everything” only to find out we are dimensional in our own misgivings what we know and what we think we know!
Wow so spot on ; Humility isn’t victimhood, has a backbone and speaks truth to power. Just attempt to do the right thing in every aspect of life and I’ve found you will succeed. I’m not saying it will be easy but the challenges of life are not all easy.
Wow, great one, Dan. I just walked by a copy of Dare to Lead in the Portland airport this morning, and it got me to thinking. If there are only leaders, who are the followers? If service and humility are the marks of the most effective leaders, what are the distinguishing characteristics of good followers? Perhaps the best followers are effective leaders of themselves, and some of the best leaders are Jose who have been good followers.
Arrogant leaders push down work without providing the skills and resources. They can hoard knowledge and hand out the blame when things go wrong. Sadly, I have had the opportunity to experience all this with my leadership first hand. It can make things so difficult but it can also present an opportunity to not blame them and do whatever I can for my own growth anyways
Agree with the insights in post of yours and others. So true that humility is vital to ensuring a healthy, viable organization.
Dan, powerful post this one! Like Pete and Scott said above “Ouch…”. Even writing this comment now feels an act of arrogance. Have a great weekend! Love
Read “The Arrogance of Power” by the late Senator William Fulbright, to whom hundreds of thousands of students are thankful for having been given the opportunity to study abroad.
Thank you for fantastic insights and views. New to the site and looking forward to learning more about myself and others
This is posted on my wall and what perfect timing as this is on of my personal goals for this year. As always, thank you for your insightful posts. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”