Humility in Leadership

I have been looking into wisdom as a leadership virtue and finding that it is closely allied to humility. It is difficult to imagine a respected wise leader as being haughty and arrogant. S/he is more likely to be concerned about the quality of the organisation, its effectiveness and the quality of its relationships internally and with its stakeholders rather than with 'ego-branding'. Charismatic, transformational and bold leadership styles may give the impression of a lack of humility, but humility is a strong and self-confident practice in which a person has developed a heightened sense of self awareness and of others. Humble leaders understand their strengths and weaknesses and have a balanced inner view, able to receive praise, criticism and correction from others.

In a study just published in the Journal for Leadership and Organisational Studies (February, 2010), Rob Nielsen et al have surveyed a range of literature drawn from psychology, organisational and management studies on humility in constructing their “Model of Humility and Socialised Charismatic Leadership”*. The common themes that they discovered in the literature was that humility allows individuals to:
* develop a holistic self-concept;
* exercise discernment in their behaviours toward others;
* become more sentient about the self and its relation to others (“others oriented”);
* keep accomplishments in perspective;
* interpret life’s events in a broader context, and to
* transcend the immediate environment and in-group membership to a sense of a larger reality.

Nielsen et al concluded that in holding a transcendent perspective, “humble people are not overly focused on personal or even group gains or agendas exclusively, nor do they consider themselves to be superior to others.” (Nielsen et al, 2010).

How do we work this out? Comments welcomed below.
(Picture is Ryuzaburu Kaku, President of Canon, 1977-97, a wise man)
* Nielsen, Rob, Marrone, Jennifer, Slay, Holly, 2010, "A New Look at Humility: Exploring the Humility Concept and Its Role in Socialized Charismatic Leadership", Journal for Leadership and Organisational Studies, 17:1, pp.33-43