Ante gloriam humilitas
Humility before glory. That was the overarching message of Davis H. Taylor, author of “The imperfect leader“, in his talk at the Iacocca Institute Leadership Breakfast Series at Lehigh University.
In his talk, Mr. Taylor outlined four of “the not so secret secrets of transformational leadership” that he details in his book, but he focused most strongly on humility. Humility, the real thing, is a rare commodity. It manifests itself as someone who actually considers the needs of others before themselves. As a leadership style, this has been called “leading with a servants heart” or “servant leadership”. Davis makes the point that by demonstrating authentic humility, your just reward will follow. A rising tide lifts all ships and all that good stuff. The catch, he says, is that if you look out for others interests because you expect to gain, it is not authentic and will fail. I’m paraphrasing but that was the message I took away.
Other valuable nuggets included:
People (workers) don’t get excited about the profit of the company, only accountants do. People get excited by doing something that makes a difference by fulfilling a human need. (Guy Kawasaki makes this point in a different way in “The Art of the Start“. He calls it “Make Meaning”.)Leaders don’t execute work. The more a leader executes the less gets done.You have to be dissatisfied with the current reality to define a preferred future.
Davis delivered a compelling message in a comfortable manner. Nothing he said would be news to anyone who has read a leadership book in the last decade, but as he himself points out, for some reason we don’t do these things. Personally I think that every opportunity you have to discuss the concepts of leadership is an opportunity to learn, and to rededicate yourself to applying the principals that you may have let slip away.
