Years ago the philosopher Socrates argued that humility is the greatest of all virtues. His observation said that wisest people are the first to admit how little they really know.
Many researchers conclude people with greater humility people are good learners, decision-makers, and even problem solvers. One study even found that someone’s humility could trump over high IQ performance. After all, it does not just mind, it’s also a mindset!
Though humility is important for all especially for leaders, which improves strategic thinking and boost the performance of colleagues across an organization.
More Confidence better humble!
The major focus on being humble s a great shift in perspective after decades of interest and indulgence in self-esteem and self-confidence,.
High self-esteem and humility need not necessarily be at odds, of course. As Khalid Aziz, a well-known leadership coach points out, “you need the confidence to be humble.”
The self-esteem provide unconditional positivity and optimism at the expense of any criticism or doubt
Unfortunately, a lot of time self-esteem and self-belief often neglected to consider the importance of humility alongside confidence. After all, both are important factors.
If you ever read the book Will Storr describes in his book Selfie, the self-esteem movement promoted in the popular media. This even encourages parents and teachers to provide unconditional positivity and optimism at the expense of any criticism or doubt. But in today’s scenario, it somewhere lacks. If this happens it hardly sets the stage for healthy humility.
Humility- A better predictor of performance than IQ score
Indeed, the humility ratings proved to be a better predictor of performance than measures of actual intelligence. Being humble is quite important for some of the less gifted students and ever with those with extraordinary gifts. This trait almost compensates for their lack of natural intelligence and allow them to perform as well as people with much higher IQ scores.
The person with the greatest humility may not have started out the strongest or smartest, but by acknowledging the gaps in their knowledge or skillsets and then correcting all the mistakes. They made the greatest improvements over the course and that’s what life requires. More humility, more acceptance to learning, and curiosity to do the new stuff. Overall, the humbler students were just more “teachable” in spite of their IQ level.
One test even suggests that humbler people also score higher on tests of “cognitive reflection”, which is related to the tendency to override your gut reactions and question your assumptions. That’s an important result, since more reflective thinkers tend to be less open to misinformation. This means that humility could have an important effect on people’s general decision making.
Think Individual
Besides these individual benefits, recent research shows that a leader’s humility can also have important knock-on effects for their team members. World needs more Humble leaders, more humility in people. So that they can cultivate greater work engagement and job satisfaction among their employees. This even develops a sense of empathy, so you also understand other’s points of view before jumping to a conclusion.
Be Humble