Humility

"The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. "
Confucius, The Confucian Analects, Chinese philosopher & reformer (551 BC - 479 BC)


"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. "
Mark Twain, US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

"If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect. "
Ted Turner

Back after a long break (again) and with new perspectives. The key issue I have been wrestling with is the extent to which I am over-worked and under-resourced. I would look at my achievements and all the wonderful benefits I had delivered and feel under-appreciated - "Cant they see that this is an excellent investment of resource?!!" However, and it does take some humility to even open up to this, I began to challenge my paradigm. Yes, I felt overwhelmed but did that really make me a victim of lack of vision by others? Was I truly the innocent hero brilliantly pulling out the stops to deliver value to the customer in the face of short-sightedness and ignorance above me? Or was I simply "in the box"?

I have learned a great lesson in humility from a book called "Leadership and Self-Deception" by the Arbinger Institute:

http://www.arbinger.com/en/bookstore.html#leadershipandselfdeception

And the first quote above, which touches on the need to take action is at the heart of this for me. There is usually an action we sense we should take in certain situations (e.g. write the report now" or "prepare resourcing plan for leadership team review" etc). And we may not take that action. This may have been an action that came into our minds from a deep place within us and would probably have had quite an impact. But we didn't do it. In effect we betrayed ourselves (that part of us that prompts us, our conscience if you will). We then invest substantial energy defending that decision and justifying it, finding faults in others as necessary. It all seems very real and very convincing. There is much emotional investment. Wwe become victims. We get "into the box".

So, armed with this element of Awareness, I have engaged the other of the four elements (see previous posts on the Four Elements), Flow, to address the action piece. One terrific exponent of flow for me is David Allen, with his Getting Things Done methodology:

http://www.davidco.com/

I won't dive into that now, but this has been transformative and quite humbling....