Being Humble as a Leader. A Sign of Strength or Weakness?

Humility is seen as a key leadership trait these days. But what does being humble mean in practice? Why should a leader be humble? And isn't there an inherent contradiction between being humble and being strong and powerful? Key Elements  and Time Stamps[01:54] We explore the real-life example of a large seafood company that introduced “being humble” as a core value across three continents. Other values such as  collaboration, innovation, or passion were quickly accepted as a necessity to double the size of the business. But humility? That sounds weak, doesn’t it?The CEO explained that neither he nor anyone else can have all the answers. There are so many things we don’t know. When we want to lead this massive change that lies ahead of us, we need to be humble. What we did in the past won't work in the future. We need to learn, and this is one aspect of being humble. The CEO demonstrated humility in front of his executive team by admitting to not knowing.The executive team then agreed on what being humble means and how it is expressed. When discussing values in an organization, when we agree on how we want to work together, buzzwords are not enough. We need to ensure that we have the same understanding how such values are expressed through behaviours. In this particular case, people agreed that being humble is associated with being open to find things to improve. Never think that we are good enough. The moment you think you are good enough, even if you're the market leader, that is where things start to decline. Being humble is the opposite of being arrogant. Arrogance is associated with feeling you are ahead, feeling you are entitled, feeling you have it all figured out.This then leads to listening. Listening and being curious are critical and go together. Change requires learning. To learn, leaders need to be curious and have an open mind. Then they will ask the right questions and they will listen because they want to learn and get better.[12:12] Other key traits of the most successful leaders are being competent, inspiring,  forward-looking, and visionary. While these may sound like “stronger” attributes than being humble, they do not keep a leader from questioning themselves. Being visionary, courageous, etc, does not mean you need to be arrogant. [15:00] A leader can be confident in their abilities, but it does not mean they cannot question themselves. Actually, it requires confidence to say, ”I don't know.” As a leader, being humble, showing your team that you don't know, is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength. It is also a sign that you trust your team to answer those unanswered questions. It  empowers the team.[17:26] Then, why  are there are so many leaders who are  obviously not very humble?One reason may be that their so-called confidence, knowing it all, is actually an expression of their own fear. I think that arrogance is an expression of fear. The fear of that they won’t be respected if they admit they don’t know. And then there is the trap that these leaders seem reasonably successful, consequently they don't see the need to change.  But the question we need to ask here is, how much more successful could they  and their organization be if the leader was more humble? Reflection Questions [28:48 min]:How can I be more humble?In which situations would it help me and the people I'm interacting with?How can I express humility?How comfortable am I with not-knowing, especially if I'm a senior executive?Does not knowing make me feel scared? Or does it make me feel more energetic and more curious and say, “ hmm, that's interesting: I need to figure that out!“