I always thought that being humble meant that you did not brag about your success or that you were not one to seek all the credit for something or that you didn’t need to always have the spotlight on you. However, a good friend recently made me think about humility differently. She offered that humility was more about your relation to others. That is, do you treat everyone with dignity and respect regardless of their personal or professional standing? Or do you think yourself to be better than others and disregard their value and contribution because they don’t have letters after their name or they may not make as much money as you, etc. Humility, in her definition, is really about how you hold yourself in association to others. Additionally, she offered her thoughts about what humility isn’t. Humility isn’t “playing small” or underselling yourself. It isn’t choosing to not celebrate your accomplishments. It is not deciding that you don’t want to speak up or share your ideas for fear that you will be taking up too much space in the room. That is not humility.
Certainly, I believe that all the ways I thought about humility still have value in how we show up professionally. But what happens when the way we define humility becomes a detriment to our ability to show up as our whole selves? Humility does not have to be a sum zero game. What if we could be both bold and humble? Who says that we can’t celebrate our wins and also celebrate the accomplishments of others? Why not share that brilliant idea and also be willing to listen to the ideas of others? What if we allowed ourselves to be great and also see others as equally amazing? I believe that humility is not only about how we hold others in relation to ourselves. It is also about how we hold ourselves in relation to others. Do we see others as more valuable? More deserving? Smarter? More worthy of acknowledgment and recognition? If so, when we say that we are “humble” what does that really mean to us? What are we really saying? Take some time to examine your own definition of humility and unpack how it actually shows up for you.
I leave you with some questions to consider as you examine the role of humility in your own life.
· How do you define humility?
· How do you see yourself in relation to others?
· How does your definition of humility show up in your personal and professional life?