4 Qs - Superpower: Confident Humility

We’re wrapping up a series where we’ve explored your Agile Leader Superpowers! Along the way, we’ve looked at Essentialism, Constraint Clarification, Listening, Challenging, Awareness, and Inspiration. Wrapping it up this week: Confident Humility.

Quintessential Thought

As a leader, navigating the complexities of your role can be challenging. Along both sides of your path lie perils that can sap your strength and limit your team’s effectiveness. On one side is the peril of overconfidence, which can lead to blind spots, while perilous fear lies on the other side, paralyzing progress. 

The key lies in finding a balance: confident humility.

That phrase may seem contradictory - how can we be humble at the same time that we’re confident? The key to engaging this superpower is focusing on what we are confident and humble about.

Here's how to harness this superpower:

• Confidence: You can choose to be confident about you and your team’s capabilities, ability to learn and improve, and partnership with your customers.

• Humility: You can choose to humbly recognize you don’t know everything that will happen in the future, areas you and your team can learn and improve, and the potential for emerging, better approaches.

By expressing both confidence and humility, you can lead with conviction while remaining adaptable to challenges. This approach empowers you to navigate uncertainty and inspire your team to achieve great things.

Quotes

“Overconfidence blurs out the risk. Inferiority magnifies it.” - Toba Beta

“You can expect to find the most destructive overconfidence in places that are exceedingly complicated and unpredictable.” - David McRaney

“Humility, I have learned, must never be confused with meekness. Humility is being open to the ideas of others.” - Simon Sinek

“True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.” - Ralph W. Sockman

Quick Step

Facilitate a conversation with your team or a key team member to explore these two core topics: confidence and humility. Consider how you can lead in a way that helps them gain confidence or humility in appropriate areas.

Question

Which do you tend to fall into - overconfidence or fear? How does that look for you?

Want to chat? Reach out to [email protected] so we can help you get Unstuck!

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