Do you have a Vitamin H deficiency ?
“To the Gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride” — Steven Pressfield
I recall a Human Resources leader describe how he was often asked to make the final decision on senior executive recruitment. He said that the discriminating factor between candidates was invariably humility. In his book Work Rules, Laszlo Bock[i]echoed this when he listed the characteristics for candidate selection at Google — humility was at the top of the list[ii]. When discussing the defining characteristics of leadership, Navy Seal Commander Jocko Willink said “the most important quality for me, that I look for in other people and that I try and maintain in myself is the quality of humility …”.
Like a vitamin deficiency, an absence of humility can stunt our growth. Ego is the voice that’s telling us that we are better than we are with Wayne Dyer describing it as “a conscious separation from everything”. If we aren’t humble and open to feedback from others we cannot improve and grow. In his 2005 graduation address “This Is Water”, author David Foster Wallace warns against “blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.” He goes on — “The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.” Michael Patrick Lynch reinforces this[iii] — “That third thing is: have a little humility. By humility here, I mean epistemic humility, which means, in a sense, knowing that you don’t know it all. But it also means something more than that. It means seeing your worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experience of others. Seeing your worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experience of others. That’s more than just being open to change. It’s more than just being open to self-improvement. It means seeing your knowledge as capable of enhancing or being enriched by what others contribute. That’s part of what is involved in recognizing there’s a common reality that you, too, are responsible to.”
How do we maintain humility ? In the book Factfulness[iv], Hans Rosling and his collaborators suggest we must look within. Rosling says “Most important of all, we should be teaching our children humility and curiosity. Being humble, here, means being aware of how difficult your instincts can make it to get the facts right. It means being realistic about the extent of your knowledge. It means being happy to say “I don’t know”. It also means, when you do have an opinion, being prepared to change it when you discover new facts. It is quite relaxing being humble, because it means you can stop feeling pressured to have a view about everything, and stop feeling you must be ready to defend your views all the time. Being curious means being open to new information and actively seeking it out. It means embracing facts that don’t fit your worldview and trying to understand their implications. It means letting your mistakes trigger curiosity instead of embarrassment.”
American economist Thomas Sowell reinforced that it takes effort to remain humble when he wrote “It takes considerable knowledge just to realise the extent of your own ignorance”. But we can also engage others to help us. Roman Statesman and philosopher Cicero wrote “The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk” and in ancient Rome an Auriga was a gladiator slave on the chariot who held a crown above the head of the triumphant General during the victory procession. The Auriga would continuously whisper “memento homo” meaning “remember you are only a man” to keep the General grounded. We can have family or friends keep us grounded and remain humble, to act as our Auriga.
[i] Previously SVP of Human Resources at Google
[ii] The full list is humility, conscientiousness, a sense of responsibility not to quit until the job is done well, comfort with ambiguity and a sense of fun and courage.
[iii] How to see past your own perspective and find truth, Michael Patrick Lynch, TED April 2017
[iv] Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Hans Rosling with Osla Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, 2018
