Never Confuse HUMILITY for MEEKNESS | A Bit of Optimism #Podcast

6 Jun 2024 · 0 min

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Short transcript excerpt from a YouTube podcast conversation (Simon Sinek and another speaker) about the relationship between humility, confidence, and leadership. The speakers argue that humility is a byproduct of confidence—secure people can be quiet and listen—and recommend building team members' confidence to foster humility and better leadership.

Never confuse humility for meekness. You can have the biggest fricking ego, but if you also think great of the people on your team and you are curious about their ideas, that's being humble.
I was at Clay Christensen, the famous Harvard Business School professor. Like his last lecture, he asked six Harvard PhD students to define humility. Not one of them had defined it as, like, false modesty or self deprecation. They had all defined humility as a byproduct of confidence. People who are fundamentally secure and confident in themselves can be quiet. And with quiet comes the ability to listen. So it's just really interesting how confidence and security breeds humility, and then humility sets the conditions for great leadership. That's such a great insight, right?
If you want to help people on your team build humility, work on their confidence.