Rubenstein on Humility and the Economy

Each day offers a distinct choice to act humbly for peace, to or react by arrogant attempts to seize power in your race to the top. But what’s this humility David Rubenstein proposes for leaders?

Without doubt, humility that is hardwired into minds, is the stuff that builds and sustains a brain powered community. It’s also true that arrogance tends to trigger a toxic workplace. But why does virtue come easier to some people, while eluding others like deer hide from hunters?

The driving force behind Rubenstein’s challenge to seize opportunities with humility has little to do with self depreciation.  In contrast, modesty relates more to:

• Dividends that follow wise leaders’ interactions with others
• Insights about who you really are when crisis strikes
• Daily efforts to become who you want others to see in you.

Humility –

1. Emerges from a personal search for meaning
2. Comes clothed with a desire to know and be known, and
3. Grows with a commitment to help others to speak and feel heard.

Less reliant on the good that comes to you, humility shapes core beliefs that define you by generosity to others. Have you seen it raise productivity where you work?

If humility seems a foreign concept in a capitalist economy, you may be right. Real humility rarely comes easily when success lays down ambitious tracks before highly competitive leaders. Instead it appears to bring new meaning when our best efforts add up to two-bit offerings and defeat appears inevitable. Humility often offers a last ditch ladder to climb back on – after sinking sands swallowed our last morsel of courage.

How then do you achieve humility, that avoids fear that runs our economy into crisis?

The human brain rewires its plasticity for more humility each time you:

• Value the multiple contributions that others bring
• Resist cynicism that brags about personal achievements
• Show healthy sense of self-worth and self-esteem
• Facilitate others’ ideas while sharing your own best practices
• Collaborate in ways that add value to another person’s offering
• Serve and learn from those who differ from you
• Communicate good tone when faced with conflict

What would you add to Rubenstein’s challange to act humbly and avoid arrogance?

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