A colleague this week asked me if I could distill good leadership to one quality.
Over the course of this first semester, I have had the opportunity to consider – deeply – what I believe are the core qualities that make up a good leader, that inspire a leader who truly serves others.
A colleague this week asked me if I could distill good leadership to one quality. He wanted to know what was the quality I believe is the most essential in an excellent educational leader.
I should, perhaps, have taken more time to answer than I did but one quality immediately came to my mind when I was asked the question and I was answering before I knew it.
Humility.
When I consider my personal journey and all the experiences – wonderful, terrible, and everywhere in between – that journey has afforded me and I reflect on the most salient takeaways I have gained, humility emerges at the top of the list of the most crucial qualities of a leader.
It would take far too much ink for me to enumerate the many lessons I had to work through which helped me learn that I want and need to keep humility at the center of my leadership. I could discuss the times I thought I knew better than the wisdom of the room, the times I got ahead of myself and ahead of process, the times I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge and was afraid to admit that I was not the smartest person in a given conversation and that I did not have all the answers.
I have blogged about many of these experiences in the past. Each and all of them have taught me that the key component of my leadership and the quality I strive to keep foremost in my approach to it is humility.
It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom, said Gandhi. If that is true, and I believe that it is, it is wise, then, to embrace the wisdom of others and to do so in humble humility.
I want humility to be the heart of my servant leadership. I will work to make it so.