I’ve written quite a number of articles about leadership (such as 100 Ways to Be a Better Leader) and a handful about humility (such as 50 Ways to Be More humble.  Humility is something that people learn by different methods and while I may have learned humility through my own Christian foundation, this at times also causes people to react to my articles and content I include.  I assure you, there are many ways to learn about leadership and humility and I only offer my perspective here, whether you align with it or even agree with it is up to you and your lifestyle but has little to do with humble leadership itself so please examine the subject of the article here, not the context from which it may be learned.  That to me is the whole point of blogging, to share ones learning’s, one’s thoughts and to let others take from it what they want if they think it is valuable and to discuss similar and opposing opinions when topics arise you are passionate about.  Humility is a topic that is hard to write about and often controversial.  Because of this, I only ask that you consider the words to be words and how you apply it something specific to your life.  There have been and still are many great teachers on humble leadership and there is much to learn from them in additional to the points I’ve included in this article, so let’s get started.

Leadership is often seen as one person steering and directing many and many of the names that come to mind first when thinking of leaders are those in the public sector, politicians, sports leaders, great authors and motivational speakers.  While many of these people are in fact incredible leaders, humble leadership is not often why they are so well known.  Humble leadership requires a leader to lead without a desire for attention, for getting well known or for because famous due to that leadership.  Those things may very well happen, but they are never a desire of a humble leader.

Parenting is Often Humble Leadership

Parents have a tremendous opportunity to lead their children and the desire to be a great parent is for the sake of others, not themselves.  Great parents do not hope to be recognized as great parents (from people outside their family at least) and they don’t typically think about any specific achievements they might gain from being the model parents they strive to be.  This type of parenting is a perfect example of humble leadership.  They show by practice what making good choices in life is all about, how to help others and care for one another and how to support people to learn and make great decisions on their own.  These traits are ones that any good leader should have as well and so parenting can be a great place to find leadership without their own agenda, an important part of humble leadership.

Putting the needs of others before yourself and truly wanting to make others more successful with no concern about the impact of that on you can quickly make a humble leader!

Leading by Example and Not Authority is Humble Leadership

Another area that humble leaders lead is by example.  Leading by example can be done by any type of leader but it tends to be done by humble leaders more.  Humble leaders are most interested in showing what can be done and by doing those themselves first.  They don’t force anyone to follow them and they typically lead by example with nothing more than a hope that others will see, and follow suit.  It is often done for leading with specific behaviors in a workplace.  Holding one’s values close and making decisions that let them uphold those values.  Or working in a particular field or role, despite their ability to change and go elsewhere.  It might even be that a humble leader makes a number of personal sacrifices for the sake a company or people in it, without those people ever knowing.  These types of actions and leadership happens every day, and while it is not always obvious to people and more so, often hidden on purpose by a humble leader, the fact is, that is does happen and is often going on in our very own workplaces each and every day!

Humble Leadership Occurs Between Friends All the Time!

Another not so well known area to find humble leadership is that which goes on between friends all the time.  Friends are constantly doing little things to make each other feel better, enjoy one another’s company and to help them get through tough times.  This caring and compassion are exactly the kind of things that humble leadership is based on.  Friends are constantly spending time together, laughing and enjoying one another’s company.  It builds trust, security and comfort that don’t exist without those close personal interactions.  Humble leadership is the same and takes time to develop that trust and security to gain the influence that is required for any leadership task.  It is done by relationship and gives plenty of time to let it develop and become useful.  Humble leadership is not something that can be forced or created quickly, just like most friendships.

Humble Leadership Drawbacks

The methods of a humble leader are very powerful and can create influence and impact with much more momentum and passion than aggressive leaders or authoritative leaders.  The biggest drawback is that one of time, as humble leadership is not something that can be done quickly.  It takes much more time and dedication to create change and get results from it.  The followers that humble leadership can generate however, are often much more loyal themselves and often new humble leaders are created as a result.

I believe that humble leadership is the most powerful of all leadership styles and while it isn’t necessarily suitable to all areas needing leadership, it is a style that makes relationships, trust and connections between people stay at the forefront. It aligns best with my own core values of service, honesty, spirit and integrity so it is something that I can let happen, instead of forcing it to happen.  What about you, do you have examples of humble leadership in your life, can you enjoy the natural aspects of leadership in a humble way and how do your core values align with your style of leadership?  I’d love to read your comments and thoughts on the subject!

Posted by Mike King under Life | 18 Comments »

I’ve written a number of articles on leadership and have a complete leadership series here (or on PDF)  for you to enjoy if you haven’t seen it before but I thought a list of ways to be a leader would set more examples and provide a starting point for being more of a leader as well.  Actually, I decided to run this after seeing a list of 100 ways to show boldness by Armen @ TimelessInformation.com which he got the idea from Luciano at Litemind.  I’d love to see some of my readers make a list on new subjects and keep these lists and links going…

Becoming a better leader takes time and determination. It helps to have your own Business Cards to allow you to branch out and become more influential.

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Leading People

1. Volunteer to help before you know what you are really needed for
2. Show up early for a meeting and welcome everyone with a handshake as they arrive
3. Facilitate a meeting for someone you work with
4. Prepare for a meeting before you attend and present your thoughts on the meeting topics first.
5. Highlight several strengths or skills you see another person has and tell them<
6. Admit a mistake you have made
7. Tell stories of times where you have learned something new from a failure
8. Apologize for some wrong doing or hurt you have caused to someone
9. Display or publish your own personal values to your co-workers
10. Introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know in the workplace
11. Start a relationship with a colleague outside of work12. Develop and use a consistent positive response to greetings like, “Hi, how are you?”
13. Share with someone one of your vulnerabilities
14. Always treat others respectfully
15. Outline for your boss each month all your accomplishments, plans and lessons learned
16. Make calls to maintain your network and to keep your contacts informed of your presence and lend an offer of help should they need it
17. Be transparent and share personal stories
18. Provide regular feedback to others about behaviors and actions you can see and hear19. Share your vision
20. Dream big
21. Define, build and maintain your reputation
22. Spend more time with those performing well than those not
23. Keep business performance and expectations independent of any personal relationship (business is business and personal is personal)
24. Admit when you are not right
25. Communicate clearly, inquire deeper and paraphrase often
26. Spend time communicating with people in private
27. Ask about and learn what motivates other people to help them achieve it

Leadership Skills and Development

28. Start an informal learning time at lunch with colleagues and pick various topics to cover on a regular schedule
29. Send out on email your favorite learning websites
30. Tell others about how you learn new skills
31. Offer to help someone develop an area you are already familiar with
32. Teach a skill you have learned to others
33. Learn the DiSC profile (or another type of behavior/personality profile) to help describe and communicate more effectively with others
34. Put at least one thing into action from every course / book you ever complete
35. Show empathy and compassion to others
36. Find a mentor to focus your own development with
37. Mentor someone else in an area or role you excel at
38. Create/write your own training manual and share it with others
39. Write down all of your goals with end dates and ensure they are measurable
40. Write your desired legacy or epitaph
41. Increase communication by using open ended questions
42. Actively pursue and encourage continuous improvement for yourself and others
43. Continue to grow and raise your expectations over time

Leadership Actions

44. Accept responsibility for your own actions and make that point known
45. Smile at the first people you see each and every day
46. Complete the one thing you have procrastinated the most before anything else!
47. Start procrastinating things a leader doesn’t do.
48. Encourage and promote change. Be a change agent.
49. Add enthusiasm and passion to your presentations
50. Say no to unimportant requests
51. Bring up and engage in a difficult subject or conversation
52. Keep your actions and decisions aligned with your values
53. Read books and share them with others
54. Be first to demonstrate and practice the Golden Rule
55. Choose to promote someone else’s idea over your own
56. Pick 3 low value things you can stop doing and stop doing them from now on
57. Listen and think more than you talk
58. Show appreciation and thanks to others
59. Be bold in your actions
60. Tackle your biggest fear by facing it to overcome it

61. Step up your business attire a notch and keep it that way
62. Memorize and share your favorite leadership quotes
63. Be persistent
64. Do one new leadership action every day
65. Maintain and uphold any professional ethics
66. Practice what you preach
67.Be confident in your abilities and decisions
68. Strengthen your unique attributes
69. Do what you say and carry through on your commitments
70. Work hard and play hard, you need to show an ability to balance both
71. Let go of perfectionism for yourself and others
72. Be willing to take risks
73. Take initiative
74. Reduce and even eliminate things that are distracting
75. Set time aside for planning and strategy
76. Review and recap your progress and accomplishments

Servant Leadership

77. Take a day off work to go volunteer for a non-profit group
78. Always give credit to those you work with or who work for you
79. Admit and accept fault for what you are involved in even if its not solely yours
80. Don’t judge others, offer help to promote change instead
81. Be open minded for other people’s ideas and opinions
82. Stay calm and control emotional outbreaks in all situations
83. Sacrifice your own time or personal goal to help achieve a collective goal
84. Take on a task or trade a task for one that no one else wants to do
85. Contribute for free to personal and career development systems like wikis, blogs, articles, interview, speaking opportunities or other related systems
86. Find your own passions and connect with others in a community sharing that passion
87. Engage in a conversation with a stranger
88. Do something nice for a complete stranger or homeless person
89. Use the 5W questions to investigate learning and teaching
90. Keep complacency at bay and drive through resistance from others
91. Let go of having things done your way and accept alternative paths
92. Let others share their opinions before you
93. Express gratitude and appreciation for what you have
94. Put love into what you do and how you do it
95. Build trust by offering to trust people before expecting it to be earned
96. Rely on and reveal your spiritual guidance that helps you be the leader you are
97. Make decisions that build a team, not an individual
98. Do the right thing even if it won’t be liked
99. Give first and without any expectation
100. Be humble and willing to serve others

Posted by Mike King under Success | 45 Comments »

My Own Realizations

I’ve written articles on being humble before and I strive to stay humble when talking and sharing about my own knowledge and skills with others.  I used to have a much more competitive and egocentric attitude which I learned to change.  The problem is that I’ve taken that so far, I often now reserve myself while trying to be humble but it’s at the expense of sharing with others.  If there is an area I could help I often hold myself back to avoid being overbearing or pushy with my ideas.

Interestingly, I recently met David Zinger from Slacker Manager while he was in Calgary and he reinforced something I’ve been told not only by him, but also friends and colleagues recently.  He saw right away at how I shrug off some of my skills and he questioned me about that.  I’ve had this impression of myself that I can be too ‘pushy’ with my ideas.  David recommending getting past that by simply offering your help by invitation.  If you give the invitation to someone else, you leave it up to them if they want to take advantage of it or not.  They don’t have to accept and you certainly are not pushy by offering help by invitation.

So, I guess, having this told to me several times now, and especially when someone I first meet can see me doing it, I realized I need to be more careful of that perception I’ve created and not to limit myself with what I have to offer.  I’ve taken the step to share these findings and my skills by writing here at Learn This and I truly love knowing I can impact people’s thinking, their knowledge and lives.  Now, I need to extend that out by invitation to more people I interact with in person, not just behind this screen.  I hope this site will continue to find me friends and people to meet in person as that is where I hope to extend more invitations of help.  All of this led me to look at ways to offer what you know by invitation and these are some of the ways I feel a person can do that!

Realize What You Have to Offer

You need to recognize your own strengths and know what you are capable of before you can offer help to others. Obviously, there is help you can offer in almost any area even if you don’t have skills for that.  I’m meaning to look more at what your unique skills, talents and strengths are so that you can offer the best you have.  Take time and surveys to think about and outline your strengths so you can find ways to make them available.  There are great resources online in surveys, articles and of course in books (such as Discover Your Strengths, The Strength Finder) to help uncover your strengths.  Ask others you know what they see are your strengths and accept what strengths you have.  Sometimes we ignore our strengths we have because we want to have choose our strengths or give the impression that we have strengths that are not real.  While strengths can certainly be changed, it takes time and practice to learn them and its far more valuable to realize what you already have and take advantage off it.

Don’t Miss An Opportunity to Help

Once you realize the strengths you have, look for opportunities to use them.  Use them for yourself, use them to help others and look for ways to offer to others, the benefits of your strengths.  This might be some expertise, special skills, knowledge, personal trait or characteristic.  Any of these can be helpful in different situations, so pay attention to where you have a chance to use them.

One way to do this is to watch others who you know have a strength in common with you and see if you can see how they use it.  Ask them how they use it and observe their actions.  Seeing it demonstrated is a great step is seeing how you can do the same thing.  Look for ways they take advantage of their strengths and replicate their actions.  As you learn their techniques you can begin to apply the same steps and take advantage of every opportunity you can to share your skills and abilities with others.

Once you know your strengths, practice them and are comfortable with it as well, its helpful to offer that strength to others.  Sharing your experiences and especially your strengths with people will continue to reinforce them and it will give you the confidence to share it at every opportunity.  Make yourself and your strengths available to others.  Offer your services, your skill set, your help.  Putting out what you have to offer to others can take many forms.  Consider all the ways you could do this:

• Face to face communication to others with an offer of your strength
• Invite others to ask you about your strengths.
• Share your story of how you’ve developed your strengths
• Ask others about their strengths to bring attention to the topic
• Advertise your services
• Start a blog, write articles or white papers about your strengths
• Reveal your strengths to others and encourage them to ask for your help

Growing the opportunities you have to help can also expand if you put attention to it.  This tends to cascade where you can develop those areas even further.  Continue to develop that and learn about it by practicing it, learning about it from others, and reading about those strength areas.

Keep The Invitation Open

This relates to not missing an opportunity but I think applies more when you have already helped someone or have been turned down for help.  If you respond to those people and inform that the invitation is always open and that you are willing to offer help, it is far more likely to reoccur.  People unfortunately feel an obligation to pay back what they have gained from someone and so they are often reluctant to ask someone again for help or to continue asking.  You can help to diffuse those feelings by offering your help and extending that invitation again even immediately after helping.  If they know you are still willing and not avoid them to get out of helping, that extra invitation can bring a lot of comfort in having to ask again for the other person.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 4 Comments »

This article is the first in a series of 4 on communication.  The articles in this series are:

• Better Communication: Listening for Improvement
• Better Communication: Writing with Impact
• Better Communication: Using Questions Regularly
• Better Communication: Control Your Speaking

There are so many different aspects of communication, I couldn’t hope to cover them in a single article so I’m going to look at a few specific areas of communication in how it affects our lives and our ability to learn and improve.  This first one I was inspired by Jennifer at Principles for Peace with her article on listening.  I definitely agree with many of her points and I like the background she gives about why so many struggle with listening.  I have my own recommendations (definitely some similarities here) that I wanted to write for this first article on communication.

Patient Listening is Humble Listening

I’ve written a series about learning to be more humble and being humble definitely helps with listening also.  It is important to ignore yourself, forget about what you have to say and start paying attention to the other person.  Give them time to speak and don’t interrupt by adding your opinion unless your asked to.  Be patient with your responses by purposefully waiting after each of their sentences or comments before you respond.  Count to 5 slowly in your mind before you speak to ensure the other person has said everything they wanted to say.  Often, they just need a second or two to organize their thoughts and have more to say.  If you interrupt them and scar them with your own opinion, you really are not listening.  Be patient, and give them time to share everything they want to share.

Use Your Imagination and Curiosity

I like to focus my articles and activities on what can be learned.  Listening is no exception and good listening is practiced by showing interest and having some real curiosity about the person and what they are sharing.  Put yourself into their shoes and imagine what they are feeling and thinking from the words and body language they are sharing.  Think of how you are seen in response to that and use your imagination and curiosity to think on the subject with them.

Reflect and Paraphrase

Having those inquisitive thoughts will lead you to questions.  Be careful not to jump the gun and ask those questions immediately.  The first questions that usually come to mind are simple ones and they often only require yes or no answers.  Avoid asking these types of questions.  Take a moment and reflect on what has been shared and think of questions that require more elaboration on.  Asking how and why questions that require more explanation.  These will ensure you get more valuable information and will show you have more interest as you dig deeper into the conversation.

Use paraphrasing to repeat the speaker but in your own words and paraphrase what they have said with what you interpret that to mean by asking about what they means or how it makes them feel or what you thought they were saying.  This will ensure you are interpreting their message accurately and gives the speaker a chance to correct or elaborate on anything misunderstood.

Listen Entirely

Studies show that there is a lot of non-verbal communication from person to person and its estimated that of all communication, up to 75% is non-verbal.  This means that there is a lot more to listening then the words themselves.  There are many other things to other than just their words:

• tone of voice
• speed
• body posture
• eye movement
• facial expressions
• hand and body gestures

All these other components require that you pay full attention and listen entirely, not just with your ears to hear what they are saying, but with everything to fully understand all the signals in the communication.  To do this, you need to put your eyes on the other person, but also open your own body up to them by facing them.  You should always turn your shoulders to the person that is talking and have an open body posture towards them.  Don’t fold your legs or cross your arms or even lean back in your chair.  These are all signs of disengaging or disagreement. Face them directly, learn towards them and make eye contact.  Give them your full undivided attention.

Now, when it comes to attention, its important to remove any or at least ignore any distractions when listening as well.  If you are really going to listen, you should step away from what you are doing to pay full attention.  In the workplace this means turning your chair away from your desk or computer to face the person.  If you have a desk that you sit behind, pull your chair to the side and come around your desk.  You don’t want to have any barriers or large space between you.  If your phone rings, someone else approaches, or any other distraction is nearby, simply ignore it.  Keep your attention on the person speaking.  Ignoring a phone call or another person for moment (even if its your boss) is a powerful message that you are truly focused on listening to that person and goes a long way in credibility by building trust.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 4 Comments »

I recently wrote about ways to not judge others and instead make yourself helpful in such a situation and while that will hopefully be one method to learn from, it is much bigger than that. A recent article I read on The Good Life about judgment mentioned that judging yourself is like a poison. I really like that analogy since there are many things affected when you constantly judge yourself, the biggest one is your happiness and it spills over into many other areas of your life.

The Judgment Spillway

Judging things is the norm these days and for most people, its not even considered a bad thing.  Well, sorry to break it to you, but it is.  Its an infectious, dangerous act that impacts others, your own ideas and behaviors and even your happiness.  Its typically looked at as such an innocent act and is often just brushed off as an opinion or comment.  Judgments are used for comedy in nearly every sitcom on television and its a continual form of entertainment around us.

All these judgments (no matter how simply or innocent they seem) lead us to looking at the physical appearance or first impressions that develop into habits when deciding on our own relationships, actions or behavior.  This superficial level that is only visible builds a pathway to continually look at such a superficial level and it trains us to stop looking at what a person is really like or about before forming some biased surface level opinion.  This training, whether its wanted or not, spills into our judgments of ourselves as well.  It teaches us to respond quickly and take a negative view over seeing the proper intention or thoughts behind something.  We turn the response of others into an attack on ourselves and we take things personally, get defensive and withdrawal from conversations and relationships.  All these things can affect one’s self esteem and they continue to erode at any remaining self confidence without even being conscious of it.

Turn That Self Judgment Away

The best way to deal with these judgments is to simply turn them away.  Don’t consider them judgments and look at more productive ways to use them.  This works whether someone else told them to you or they are in your own mind.   There are many ways to do this without allowing it to pick away at you.  Some of the methods available (which each really deserve an article of their own) are:

• Expect people to judge you so you’re not shocked by it
• Remember positive comments to help offset ones that tear you down from others
• Learn to accept compliments
• Be humble about yourself
• Accept who you are by recognizing your accomplishments and choices
• Know you can always improve and that everyone has room to grow
• Reflect and learn about yourself to understand and take advantage of your strengths and weaknesses
• Consider all comments (attacks or compliments) as feedback, something to learn from going forward
• Know that most judgments are caused by temporary emotional responses and not always true

Happiness Starts at the Self

Happiness is definitely at stake if you let others’ and your own judgments tear you down and belittle your life, actions and relationships. You need to control how receiving and making judgments affects you and so reducing them with the steps here is a great way to change and control what you do when it comes to judgments.  By controlling judgments and looking forward instead of dwelling on things based on judgments is a great way to live and bring allow more happiness to exist inside you.  Its freeing to deflect those judgments, hold back your own and to live your life the way you want!

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Matthew 7:1-29

I’m surprised I had as much to say as this without getting into more depth about Christian beliefs and how judgment is seen from that angle as well.  An important part of the verse above is to see that you should look first at yourself, before casting judgment to others. However, its also not saying to never judge, but to only judge first what you have already been or expect to be judged on as well.  This is a touchy subject with Christians and can easily spark a big discussion.  My point is not to raise an turmoil, but to recognize that there is SOME reason to judge but I want to encourage you to look at yourself first.  Look at your life, study yourself, the judgments others pass, use it to learn from and seek understanding in a spiritual sense around judgments.  Judgments can sabotage your happiness without you ever realizing it.  Learn to change that and you’ll see as well, that happiness starts at the self.

Posted by Mike King under God | 3 Comments »

If you missed them, the previous 2 articles in this short series are

Part 1 – Being Humble: What does that mean?
Part 2 – Being Humble: Action Steps to Be More Humble

This article is going to look at why someone would bother to learn to be humble. What are the advantages and reasons to being humble in your career and life.

First of all, the traits of a humble person are highly valued and seen positively. This is for various reasons and I’ve separated those into three main categories here.

Humble Leadership

I started out planning this article by looking specifically at humble leadership and as I thought more about being humble, I realized, it is so much bigger than that, which is is why it grew into a short series and why there are several categories now in this article. As for the leadership angle however, being humble is a very attractive trait of many leaders and is often named as one of the most important leadership qualities. Leaders need the ability to recognize others, show appreciation to others, never take credit and to always take the blame for the benefit of a team. These go hand in hand with being humble so its easy to understand why humble leaders are easily respected.

If you look through the list of action steps from part 2 , you can see that by listening, not judging, showing appreciation, giving credit and thanking others are things to be more humble, these are also all important leadership traits. Leadership is not power and so it doesn’t need showmanship, authority or dominance to lead others. What it takes, is influence , and influence is achieved by having the ability and motivation to make an impact at a personal, social and structural level.

So, if you are looking to be a better leader, learning to be a humble one can make a significant different in how others see you, follow you and with the influence you have.

A Humble Character

Being humble is not only effective to be a leader, but it is also useful for developing your overall character. Being humble will help you to focus on others instead of yourself which is a very noble character trait and will be liked by all who experience or see it. When people see how you respond to others and don’t attempt to overshadow them or dominate them in any way, you will make yourself far more approachable. This can lead to many great things but will likely have the biggest positive impact on how easily or quickly you build relationships. People generally don’t develop bad first impressions of someone who is humble and its generally easier for a humble person to earn the respect of others.

Think about your first impressions of someone who is showy, pompous, or arrogant when you meet them. Is it easier of harder for that person to earn your respect than a humble person? What do you think of someone when they take credit or make themselves look good at the expense of others? Its not really a valuable character trait to have.

Humble Spirituality

I find that being humble is so much easier in the presence of God. I find that I’m just naturally more humble when talking with people about spiritual topics. I’m not sure exactly why this is, maybe its because I really know nothing, am more careful to not judge others or ideas, or simply find God to be rather overwhelming. In any case, I know that Jesus lived a very humble life and there are many things to be learned from Him in how to be more humble. These spiritual thoughts provide a great sense of inner peace to me and is a strong reason why I want to learn to be more humble.

And whoever exalts himself will be humbled , and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Mat thew 23:12

Posted by Mike King under God & Life | 7 Comments »