What role does humility play in today’s leadership and how does this trait benefit leaders in facing the challenges present in today’s global market? That’s one of the questions I discuss with my guest Dave Balter in the latest episode of “Leadership Biz Cafe”.

Dave is the CEO and founder of the word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing company, BzzAgent, which has been featured on CBS News, the BBC, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His company has also been the focus of two case studies done by Harvard Business School.

Recently, Dave started a new web project titled “100 Days of Humility” in the hopes of drawing more attention to the need for greater humility in today’s leadership. The goal of the project is to encourage people to share their thoughts on humility in leadership, with the community voting for the story or idea which best illustrates the important role humility plays in leading others.

The project has attracted the interest of a number of well known thought-leaders, including Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin (you can also check out my contribution to this project by visiting this link).

Over the course of our conversation about the importance of humility in leadership, Dave and I discuss the following points:

• The personal experience that lead Dave to recognize why leaders need to embrace humility.
• The tangible benefits or improvements leaders can create by bringing a greater sense of humility to their leadership.
• How the level and type of interactions leaders have with their employees affects their ability to be humble.
• The relationship between how much you trust those you lead and the level of humility you exhibit through your leadership.
• What a sense of humility reveals about your character and ability to lead others.
• How humility can keep leaders grounded in their vision in the face of organizational success.
• Four measures leaders can employ to bring a greater sense of humility to their leadership.

I’d like to thank Dave for reaching out and wanting to share his own experiences as a leader coming to terms with the role humility plays in leadership. The experiences and insights he shares helps to shed some light on how humility is not just a nice trait to have, but a critical component to ensuring the success of your team’s efforts to reach your organization’s goals.

As I mentioned at the end of the show, I’d love to hear what you think about this episode, as well as what other topics you’d be interested in hearing more about in upcoming episodes of my show. You can share your thoughts/ideas by leaving a comment below or by filling out the contact form on my website.

Click on the player below to listen to the podcast:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Noteworthy links:

• Visit the 100 Days of Humility project website.
• Dave Balter’s Inc. Magazine article on humility in leadership – “The Humility Imperative: CEOs, Keep Your Arrogance in Check”.
• My quote on humility in leadership for the 100 Days of Humility project.

A few weeks ago, one of my readers left a comment on my blog asking why are there so many silos present in today’s organizations. Since replying to my reader’s query, I thought this would be a good topic to address as a follow-up to my previous piece where I shared a number of actionable steps organizations can implement to garner greater success from their collective efforts.

Now before I discuss how leaders can break down various internal silos that might be present in their organizations, let’s first look at why these silos are created in the first place.

Essentially, internal silos are created out of fear that if a mistake is found or some form of failure is encountered, the organization’s leadership will be interested primarily in finding someone to take the blame. As such, the various teams will isolate themselves to ensure they won’t get lumped with those who are within the leadership’s current focus of finger-pointing and blame.

The other reason silos take hold in organizations is because of that desire we all have to maintain a sense of familiarity; a ‘comfort zone’ that serves to provide feelings of order and consistency in the face of today’s fast-paced and ever-changing marketplace.

Within teams or departments, there is a given set of informal rules, a ‘way of doing things’ that creates this comfort zone because of its relative predictability. When teams have to co-ordinate with other teams or divisions, they find Click here to continue reading »”5 Strategies To Free Your Team From Organizational Silos”

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the importance of leaders taking time off work and going on vacation, a piece which I’m happy to share has been picked up by the American Management Association (AMA) and is now featured on their website. Since publishing that piece, I’ve received a number of emails from my readers and had conversations with various friends and acquaintances where they shared how vacation time is viewed by their bosses and their organizations.

While these discussions have inspired some future posts I’ll be writing for my blog, they also got me thinking about the other side of this vacation time equation. Namely, how leaders and their organizations can benefit from the downtime that inevitably arises when employees are away on vacation.

When members of your team go away on vacation, it’s only natural to feel some concern over how their time away from work might slow down certain efforts or limit the number of people available to address an unexpected problem or failure. Given today’s current work environment where Click here to continue reading »”How Leaders Can Take Advantage of the Summer Downtime”

A few days ago, my oldest daughter came home from school with a bit of a dilemma. She got back her latest math assignment and noticed that one of the problems she had solved correctly was marked as incorrect because her answer wasn’t rounded up to the second decimal point. As it wasn’t stated in the problem’s instructions that the correct answer needed to be rounded up to a given decimal point, my daughter was confused as to why her response was marked wrong and asked me if I could look it over to help her figure it out.

Looking over her assignment, I saw that my daughter not only solved the problem correctly, but she was right that the problem didn’t ask students to round up their answer. So, I told my daughter that all she had to do was point this mistake out to her teacher so that she could correct the grade she got on her assignment. However, my daughter felt uncomfortable with the idea of talking about this mistake with her teacher and asked me if I could bring it up instead.

Given how my daughter has a really good rapport with her teacher, I was a bit puzzled as to why she was so reluctant about discussing this with her. As we talked about it more, it became clear that her hesitation arose from feelings of discomfort over having to tell her teacher that she had made a mistake in marking her assignment.

Now one of the things my parents taught me was the importance of showing respect and appreciation for our teachers given how they help to build our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. Naturally, this is an attitude I want instill in my children as well. However, I also want them to feel comfortable with approaching authority figures to point out when errors are made.

To help encourage my daughter to deal with this herself, I made her this deal – that she try to talk to her teacher about this error and if she finds herself struggling, she can give her teacher a note I’ll write to explain what we discussed. Although not exactly thrilled, my daughter nonetheless accepted this approach to resolve her dilemma.

Of course, it’s not just children who can struggle with having to point out mistakes being made by others, especially when it’s an authority figure like a teacher or parent. Employees can also feel uncomfortable bringing to the attention of others problems or mistakes they see being made, particularly if those responsible for them serve higher up in their organization.

But this is where leaders can make a difference by providing Click here to continue reading »”5 Questions To Figure Out How Well You Manage Mistakes”