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I pay my respects and acknowledge all Traditional Custodians of Country and on whose land I live and work. I recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.
Always was, always will be.

Welcome to this week's useletter

focussing on your future not my past, it's a newsletter that's useful.

I'm not going to bury the lead.

Vladimir Putin is a dicktatorhead,

NOT a leader.

It’s kinda irritating when various presidents, prime ministers or other heads of state are described as “world leaders”.

The expression grates. They’re anything but leaders. And they don't require naming. You know who they are.

Their only interest is power and self-interest. It’s the opposite of leadership.

Leaders empower other people.

But we persist on holding them up as examples.

We can also look closer to home for poor examples of "leadership".

I’m losing count of the people I've heard complaining about their practice’s “leaders”.

Their great lamentation is the hubris of their “leaders”. Leaders who apparently are:

the only great designers in the practice;

the only ones able to do the work properly;

seemingly know everything that needs to be known;

of the opinion that things are so much better for the younger staff than in their day; and

seemingly never wrong.

It’s a failure of leadership. Impossible even to call it leadership.

Great leaders require humility.

Seeking out all opportunities to learn.

Knowing when they're wrong.

And admitting it when they are.

That's humility.

Rant over.

Let’s talk about humility.

I got you

Michael

PS: I’m giving a talk on leadership in a couple of weeks. Details HERE.

PPS: Don't forget the quote at the bottom. This week's is a fav.

Humility

An essential leadership skill

Humility is the opposite of hubris.

And we want our leaders to have humility not hubris. To be willing to admit their faults and mistakes.

If we can’t admit we’re wrong, we can’t learn, grow and get better at what we do.

By embracing being wrong we get closer to being right.

We must also acknowledge there’s a vulnerability in admitting you’re wrong. It’s especially hard in a workplace. We want to be seen to be good at our job. It’s therefore often hardest for leaders to admit mistakes. They can fear being seen as incompetent, weak or undeserving of their position. But by admitting they're wrong they should be seen as being competent, strong and deserving of leadership.

It’s an issue of culture.

And that start with the leaders.

They establish the culture.

They show us it's OK to have humility.

They show us it's OK to learn, to grow and be wrong in that process.

We want out leaders to support us. To support our work. To support us when things are hard. Not to condemn us when things go wrong. That takes generosity, not hubris.

Finally,

and building on the last Useletter.

Humility requires curiosity. It’s a growth mindset. Curiosity is an admission that we don’t know, that we want to understand or learn.

You can’t have hubris and curiosity at the same time.

This fortnight experiment with humility.

See how it impacts those around you.

Admit mistakes.

Consider those beliefs, processes or strategies you might need to rethink.

Identify the ways others might be right, not wrong.

You got this.

Want to develop better leadership?

I help practices work on their leadership team and strategies.

Supporting practices to become more open, fluid, and adaptable.

Realising the collective energy, passion, and capabilities of their people.

Let's chat about your leadership development

30 min free introductory call

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