A BRIEF WORD OF INTRODUCTION

My strongest desire is to advance the common good and to make the world a better place, every day, everywhere, by :


Advising and influencing CEO's and business leaders in my job as a consultant at KPMG ; Leading people into their most inspiring journey ever ; Teaching and helping younger generations - those who will shape the world of tomorrow ; Counseling and supporting selected political and religious leaders ; Organizing thought-provoking inspirational events like the Essentials ; Connecting people and ideas all the time ; Trying to learn and to write on a regular basis ; Transforming "think tanks" into "action tanks" ; Being a radical optimist ; Most importantly, making my wife Cécile and our 4 children as happy as possible ; Serving God and people ; Investing wisely the 86.400 seconds we get every day to make our world a better place ... And keeping up smiling, no matter what !


Thursday, February 14, 2013

The greatest strength of a leader ? HUMILITY

Looking after Others with Great Humility - Mother Teresa, a Great Leader and Nobel Prize

Many of you have been amazed by the recent decision of Pope Benedict XVI to renounce the papal throne in Rome. Basically he is stepping down from the top ministry of the Catholic world, a community of more than a billion people.

We do not know many leaders in the corporate world who would be capable, brave or clever to do the same when feeling that time has come. On the contrary, we most often observe a tendency of corporate leaders to hang around, to keep their top role as long as possible, to renegotiate retirement age upwards with the Board etc. It is not un-common amongst leaders to "keep going"...

Well, I do believe that the most important trait of character of a leader is HUMILITY.

The word is coming from the Latin "Humus" - Earth, or soil. This clearly shows the link between humility and being down-to-earth, pragmatic, close to the field, feet on the ground. The great leader of L'Oreal, Lindsay Owen Jones, who has been CEO for 18 years, used to say that the best people of L'Oreal had to be both poets (creative, imaginative) and farmers (pragmatic, humble).

A humble leader will listen to people and act for the others, usually focused on serving rather than being served. This is not obvious and easy in today's corporate highly competitive world. The notion of common good is often forgotten, but great leaders do demonstrate, incentivize and reward corporate responsibility. Clara Gayard, CEO of GE France says that today, leadership and power resides in the sentence "I share, I can". It is difficult to share without being humble.

One of the greatest humble leadership example in history is Gandhi, who was not the most arrogant person... and with great humility, empathy, and patience managed to change the British Empire and a country, India, which is now well over a billion citizens! In the corporate world of today, one could see the early retirement of Bill Gates as a bold move of humility, quitting his top job, and abdicating his entire wealth for the benefit of a Foundation seeking to eradicate diseases from the planet, e.g. malaria which kills millions in Africa every year.

More scientifically speaking, a recent study from the University of Buffalo pointed out that humble leaders were more liked (of course) by people, but also were more effective... And this is underlined by many research studies and articles from HBR. It seems that humility is really the only way for a leader to be truly authentic: Humility shows your Humanity, which is more appealing to other human beings, whom in turn would follow more easily such leader.

But what is the recipe to humility ? Well... if you have to ask :-) bad start...
I would say that a couple of attitudes and values do prove humility, and cannot really be faked or claimed:
- A real sense of others, and a passion to serve.
- Promoting and listening to others. Showing care.
- Accepting mistakes, acknowledging them, and learning from them.
- Tempering authority and desire to dominate.
Kathryn Schulz has written an excellent book on one of these dimensions: "Being Wrong" - which actually shows that denying mistakes is a real shame, missing both on authenticity and opportunity!

In a nutshell, humble leaders do create an environment which is supportive, inducing better relationships, team work, collective performance and inspiration... all geared towards success, a success with significance, as Dean Dipak Jain of INSEAD usually tells MBA students before they enter the corporate jungle.

In fact, humility is both "inspiring and connecting" ... A great fit with this Blog !