One of the things that stands opposed to good creative leadership is the unwillingness to be humble.
When was the last time you admitted a mistake?
When was the last time you took the fall for a team decision?
When was the last time you submitted to someone else’s intuition?
When was the last time you asked for advice? I mean REALLY asked for advice?
Pride builds walls around us and isolates. When pride becomes our mode of operation it will inevitably leak into the organization and will eventually create little self-defensive “silos.” When the leader is always right, everyone feels like they must always be right as well.
The need to be “right” creates an culture of backward-justification. We’re always looking for ways to prove that we were right even when the evidence doesn’t add up. And in the end, it creates a sense of helplessness in the organization because it has lost all sense of objectivity about metrics. And it also justifies mediocrity.
If you need your ego stroked, great…go for it. Somewhere else. But don’t look to your team for it. It will – in the end – destroy any hope of making something meaningful. And in the end, if you refuse to be humbled, someone else will probably do it for you.
