Humility improves personal well-being, relationship quality, and leadership effectiveness by encouraging openness, curiosity, and service rather than ego-driven accomplishment. Acknowledging personal fallibility enables understanding, forgiveness, and trust. Practicing habits such as admitting mistakes, replacing judgment with curiosity, giving credit, and reflecting on insights that change one’s mind reinforces openness and team collaboration. Active listening involves asking genuine open-ended questions, suspending the impulse to respond, and listening from the other's perspective. Listening in 'second position' increases empathy and respectful dialogue. Research on humility shows robust, broad positive effects across individual, relational, and organizational outcomes.
Since my days in graduate school, I have been obsessed with humility and its positive impact on almost every aspect of life. As a professor, it reminds me that I don't have all the answers, and that my role is to inspire openness, curiosity, and growth in my students. It keeps me grounded in my mission to enhance virtue and well-being in organizations, helping me focus less on egoistic accomplishments and more on service to society.
I launched my Humble Habits series on LinkedIn to share research-based practices for improving individual well-being, stronger relationships, and wiser leadership. Humble Habit #1 was Admitting Mistakes-showing how acknowledging errors builds trust. Habit #2 was Replacing Judgment with Curiosity, encouraging people to pause and ask, "What might I be missing?" instead of making snap judgments. Habit #3, Giving Credit Where It's Due, describes how showing gratitude strengthens teams and fosters collaboration.
Collection
[
|
...
]