It takes courage and humility to empower new talent

The leaders we have studied over the past two decades are ordinary, yet all possess characteristics that make them extraordinary. In fact, it’s the combination of characteristics that are what separate them from lesser leaders or those who aspire to leadership. That combination, moreover, often reinforces the value of each particular capability or prevents an individual one from becoming a weakness. In this particular article, I want to talk about the benefit of combining courage with humility. These two comprise half of the foundation of trustworthy leadership I discuss in my book, Intentional Leadership: Becoming a Trustworthy Leader.

Courageous leaders are those who are willing to challenge the status quo, and by doing so, gain the cooperation of others to make the changes necessary to improve a team or organization. Their courage also gives them greater confidence about the future, a mindset that keeps others from facing head on the uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with change. The same kind of connection exists between courage and hope, which is the emotion that reinforces the thinking that optimism represents. Together, a leader’s optimism and hope helps inspire followers to work together to achieve the future.

The foundation for building a culture of trust within a team or organization is first developed by a leader modeling trustworthy behavior in four key ways: by following through, sharing information, doing their job well, and caring about their followers’ best interests. The sum of these four types of trustworthiness is called the ROCC of Trust®. But, often a leader, especially when new to a team organization, can’t wait to ascertain whether or not their followers all are trustworthy themselves. So, in addition to the benefits that a leader’s courage provides to her or her team or organization, it also makes the leader more likely to build trust with their followers. One reason is that leaders who are self-confident are more likely to be trusting in general, motivating them to take the risk of trusting others first. Courageous leaders are more likely to be willing to admit and rectify a mistake, which also helps to build trust. 

Courage without humility, however, often leads to arrogance, which will contribute to blind spots leading to serious mistakes that will undermine any trust that the leader has built. Lack of humility will also make the leader less motivated to want to build trust with their followers because they will be less likely to think that they need any help in creating any changes that the leader seeks. Humble leaders are aware of their limitations, and are willing to admit they don’t have all of the answers. They then are more likely to rely on their teams for input and ideas for how to improve, change, and move forward, and motivate their teams to execute them.

By motivating their followers, courage and humility in combination also contribute to a leader’s trustworthiness, making their followers even more willing to support and implement the goals and strategies that the leader articulates. They add to a leader’s reliability and competence because they reduce the likelihood that they will pursue an incorrect course of action, or if they do, will make it easier to admit the problem and quickly change direction. The courage that supports a leader’s willingness to share information widely, and the humility to seek others’ input increase their trustworthiness in terms of openness. Courage allows a leader to support their followers’ risk-taking, while humility makes the leader more understanding of the inevitable mistakes that happen when trying something new, both of which make them more trustworthy in terms of caring about their followers’ best interests. So, a virtuous circle can be created in which leader courage and humility not only encourage trusting behavior, but also the trustworthiness that encourages followers to trust the leader even more.

One of the leaders we’ve interviewed and profiled over the years in our books on leadership, is John Rogers, Jr., Founder and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, who has encouraged and prodded endowment funds and corporate boards to become more diverse. He shared his efforts with us.

Melody (Hobson, co-CEO) and I are fortunate to be on corporate boards where we are trying to get them to do the right thing. We’re pushing the majority companies to have minority partners and executives. I know Melody has done similar work at boards she sits on. It’s one thing to have impact from our small Ariel place, but you can have so much impact when you’re sitting on a corporate board and getting them to think about these issues in a progressive way. Over 40 times over the years at Ariel, we’ve been able to encourage companies to invest in minority-owned enterprises, and to appoint their first minority board member.

In addition, John Rogers, Jr. shared how his firm has been able to provide direct support to help students have access to new career opportunities.

The newest program at the University of Chicago that we’ve supported financially is the creation of a program for minority students to have summer internships in the investment offices of major endowments, exposing them to financial services careers. Initially, we’ve had 18 students placed all over the country in various endowments, and we think we’ll get up to 40 relatively soon.

Chris Deshazor, Director of Talent and Organization Development at Harness, asked his team to send him a more diverse set of candidates from the beginning of a talent search, in order to ensure that the outcome is equitable. 

We recently posted a job in one specific city and within one week (over a holiday weekend) had over 355 applicants. After sifting through those applicants, we found 24 who were qualified and interviewed eight. Of those eight, six came from external referrals and two were internal candidates, looking for a promotion. When a colleague from former employer calls you and says, “Hey, I have someone you should look at”, it makes you stop and consider that candidate. In addition, we checked to make sure that we had a diversified candidate pool, and we did. This makes you realize the power of referrals to ensure a diverse and qualified candidate pool.

Finally, when I was new to my job as Dean of the School of Management at the University of Michigan-Flint, I spent a lot of time first listening to my colleagues to learn what they thought needed to be done and how to go about it. During my first week, I spent several hours with one of my colleagues, an African-American staff member, who shared that none of the previous deans had ever shown any real interest in their work. As I thought that this was particularly important part of the School’s work, I gave her the opportunity to submit a proposal to the Chancellor’s Cabinet for a $50,000 grant opportunity that the School could apply for. 

I was challenging the status quo that existed for decades by giving this opportunity to a staff member, because non-faculty almost never have the same opportunities for growth and development that faculty do. Despite this staff member also possessing a Ph.D. as the faculty did, she and her work had been ignored by her bosses for decades. Following some time spent brainstorming together, we submitted a proposal and were awarded the grant, to which I added $25,000 from the School’s reserves. This grant enabled us to identify the reasons hundreds of our students had stopped attending our school. Ultimately, her work led to her receiving a promotion after many years of being neglected.

In order to make change happen in organizations, it takes courage, balanced with a dose of humility, to challenge the status quo and empower the talent we all have in our organizations. All of our organizations will be better for our efforts.

Written by Dr. Aneil Mishra.

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