Imagine a world where leaders feel and display deep regard for others’ dignity. That world is one where leader humility is present, driving leaders and how they interact with others. We discuss the topic of leader humility as our host, Melanie Parish, interviews scholar, teacher, trainer, and senior leader Marilyn Gist. Marilyn helps us examine how humility works and its impact on leaders and their followers alike. This is an episode you do not want to miss if you want to develop your leadership skills!

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The Impact And Importance Of Leader Humility With Marilyn Gist

I’m here with Marilyn Gist, author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility. She helps others become the leaders everyone admires by creating thriving organizations and great results. She asked us to imagine a world in which all leaders feel and display deep regard for others’ dignity. This is what humility means. It helps leaders resolve conflict, increase engagement and optimize performance. Marilyn speaks and consults widely based on experience as a scholar, teacher, trainer and senior leader. She’s formerly an Associate Dean, Professor of Management and Executive Director of the Center for Leadership formation at Seattle University. Marilyn, it’s great to have you on my show.

Thank you, Melanie. It’s a delight to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.

Let’s just dive in. I’d love to know what you’re up to in your work and life as a leader.

I have transitioned from working in University Exec. MBA programs, Exec. in AD programs for many years because of the book and some new calling. I have been doing some speaking, writing, podcasting around this idea of leader humility. I’ve built a webinar course with Alan Mulally. We finished that. That went really well. We probably will offer it again. I’ve developed some assessment tools on Leader Humility, which are available through my website. Those are the webinar. The assessment tools can be found through the Resource link. These allow people online privately to go and assess how they are on leader humility. There are two versions. A short version, which assesses the six keys that the book talks about. The more advanced version assesses those. Plus, four additional scales that are very important. You instantly will get your results and a downloadable PDF with the interpretation of those results and the advanced version that’s customized. Building this body of knowledge and helping to support leaders to get stronger in doing it.

I am really curious to hear more about your book. I’m immediately curious. Are you not working in academia anymore? Is that how I put that?

Correct.

What drove you to make a big change as a leader?

I had begun working on this book project. The project itself was about three years in the making. Including conceiving it, doing the research on the concept itself and how powerful humility is and then lining up. In the book, as you know, I interviewed a dozen CEOs of what I would call big brand companies. Named companies that everyone would about recognize. Lining them up for interviews, doing that work and figuring out how to weave their wisdom into what I was saying in the book. That whole project took at least a couple of years upfront. I wanted to write it. I just couldn’t find space to make the headway I needed doing.

I had been an Associate Dean in the last phase of my academic career at Seattle U. With the meetings and the needs of the job and running a big program, I wasn’t able to make the headway on the book. I decided to step out. It was in mid-2019. I was able to finish up the book by early 2020. It came out in late 2020. It’s been a bit of a pivot. It was a time in my career for me to do something neat and new. I’ve been there for about sixteen years. That was not my first academic role. I have been at the University of Washington for fifteen years before that. It felt as if it was time to go into a new version of the skillset doing something different. The book has been an exciting repackaging of that but having fun.

As a longtime coach with both executives and entrepreneurs, I’m super curious about what you’re finding as the challenges making that switch. I think people have that dream often of leaving a paid job and starting their own company or going out on their own. How have you found that transition?

It has been good but not without its challenges. I think one of the big ones for me was an identity shift, even being at a stage in my career where I could afford to step out financially. When you’ve worked in an organization especially as a leader, and you’ve had a team and you’ve got a reputation, you’re well known in an industry and a company or in my case, a university or two. To step out on your own removes that whole infrastructure. It also removes a sense of, “This is who I am. I’m now not that so what am I?” It took a while. I would say probably about 4 to 5 months after I had stepped down, I felt as if I was standing in a void. I didn’t know how to structure the time or what I wanted to do. This was coincident with submitting the first draft of the manuscript.

When I first stepped out, I was busy with a new contract for the book. Once I submitted it, it’s like, “Now what?” There were quite a few things to do in getting a book through the production phase. Ultimately, when it was published, by then, I’m a year later. I had begun to put out some feelers about, “How do we begin getting the word out about the book?” Starting to make some new networks of people and new friendships and new activities. I began to put down some roots in my identity. At this point, it’s fine. I’d say the identity shift was a big piece of what most people would need to expect if they’re going to do a big pivot.

Leader Humility: Leader humility is when a leader feels and displays deep regard for others’ dignity.

Also, coming into a pivot during COVID, when everything is shut down, if you’re used to doing in-person presentations, public speaking, consulting in client companies, it’s very different when suddenly everything goes remote. We’re fortunate that we have good technology that supports that. We’ve actually adapted and learned how to do lots of things that way. Initially, everybody was floundering, “How are we going to do what we did before?” It made it additionally challenging to have to make a pivot during that, which hopefully is moving a bit behind us now. We don’t quite know what the new normal is going to be.

I’m imagining this but the idea of humility also connects into identity a fair bit. Identity is something most entrepreneurs grapple with throughout their careers. I haven’t had that thought before. I think it’s, “How will I be seen? What am I projecting?” You have this marketing element of whatever you bring to the market as an entrepreneur. That identity piece is very different than an executive role, for example, where your identity is often wrapped up in someone else’s brand.

When you’re an executive at a company, you’re in a defined role. There’s a job description for it. There’s the company’s brand. There’s also the brand of the job because everybody in the organization knows what your role is. You slip into that. Certainly, anybody taking on an executive position at a company has some adjustments to make going in. The piece of that might be identity. When you’re an entrepreneur, it’s your brand. You really have both more freedom and at the same time, less structure and certainty about how to do that. In my view, there are two issues, one being the substance of what you want to offer. The other being credibility.

If you have substance but nobody knows about it, you haven’t informed people of what you can do, done the promotion and gained credibility with a large audience, that’s going to be a challenge. One aspect of being an entrepreneur is having to embrace promotion, in addition to substance. There are few other people I’ve seen who are great at the promotion but maybe not so great at the substance. I think, in time, their clients will discover that they’re not getting as much value as might have been touted. In the long run, that will hurt the reputation. Entrepreneurs have to balance both of those things and that affects identity.

We throw humility in there. To continue this conversation, just because you’ve had your foot in both worlds, having humility might be something I really value as a leader if I’m in an organization. I find that to be a difficult topic to grapple with as an entrepreneur. I am constantly feeling like I’m on the edge of what’s comfortable for me in terms of promoting my ideas, promoting my thought leadership. It feels uncomfortable to me. It’s not comfortable for me to do that. Yet, no one else is going to share those ideas. I’m curious about your thoughts on that? How do those things go together?

I define leader humility very specifically. I’m talking about a tendency to feel and display deep regard for others’ dignity. This is an interaction. As a leader, you bring a stance to that relationship with someone else that supports their dignity as a person always. I don’t think that has to conflict in any way with an idea of self-promotion or building your brand as an entrepreneur. Some people think of humility as meekness or weakness, which it can be in some other contexts. That may be what you’re referring to when you say, “If I have that, it’s hard to self-promote.” That could be true. You do need to have confidence and you should around your book and what you’ve built, Melanie. At the same time, my sense, just from my interaction with you is, you’re a person with deep humility. That would come through in your interactions with people. Those two are not in conflict.

I reside mostly in Canada and I’m an American. I was born in the US and I’ve been in Canada for many years. At the moment, I’m in the US. That’s just because I fled. I fled during this crazy time. I have struggled with a difference in values between the US and Canada around what Canadians might think of as humility. At least some people see that as more of self-deprecation as the way that needs to be expressed. As an American, I find that my presentation, outspokenness, confidence has clashed with people’s values on occasion. They find me to be probably too American if they were to be honest. I’d love to have you speak to anything you know about cultural differences and how this plays out.

There are cultural differences. The view of humility whether someone is feeling and displaying regard for others’ dignity is going to be filtered through a cultural lens. Our culture is known for being more individualized, more independent, more outspoken, more direct than some other cultures. There are some cultures that are even more like that than we are. If you’re coming from a culture that is more or less like that, you’re going to see a person who represents that differently than you would see someone more typical in your own culture. Across the cultural differences within any of them, this notion of supporting the dignity of others would be very helpful.

In some Asian cultures, for example, they have a concept of face, which is somewhat similar where the interactions are designed around supporting the face or the sense of someone else’s self-worth. That’s what dignity is, your sense of self-worth. You don’t want to violate that. In some Asian cultures, where we might interpret some of the bowing or what we might see as reticence, it’s a display of honoring that other person’s dignity, for example. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t strength. That there isn’t muscle underneath but that honoring of the face is very important.

We do less of that in the US. If we were to go over to certain Asian countries that have a lot of that and act like Americans, we can, in fact, offend people. We wouldn’t be seen as humble. If we went to some cultures that perhaps are even more out front and direct, we might be seen as perhaps being a little bit too meek. I think you have to put it in that lens. Canada would be, perhaps, a little more respectful or gentle around the issues of face. Other people’s dignity than the United States might be. It’s, “When in Rome.” Make sure that you’re doing it in the context that works in Rome.

Let’s go back to North America, mostly the US. What are some of the specific behaviors that leaders do to signal their humility? You said earlier, “You seem to have humility?” How did you extrapolate that from our very brief conversation?

I talk about three questions that people have of any leader they meet and it’s, “Who are you? Where are we going? Do you see me?” The leader’s words and actions are going to tip you off pretty quickly as to who they are, the direction they’re setting and how they treat you. In the book, I talk about six keys, two large success behaviors under each of those three keys. What tipped me off about you early on was my sense of, what I would call ego balance. You seemed to me neither meek nor arrogant. You had this confidence about your work and your show and were willing to bring me into that and engage with me. You did it in a way that was non-arrogant. We didn’t start the conversation with, “I’m Melanie Parish. You’re lucky to be on my show. I’m going to direct you and tell you everything we have to do.” You started off much more, in a way, that brought me in and made me feel I was as important to this discussion as you were. That was a tip-off around humility for me.

In the book, I talk about six of these keys. That’s one and I won’t run through all of them. I will say when it comes to the how you treat people question, the, “Do you see me,” there’s another behavior that is somewhat similar to that and its generous inclusion. In the States, we talk a lot about inclusion in this current debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in the racial justice arena, the gender arena in corporations. It’s much broader than that. It’s thinking about all the stakeholders that leaders have, from customers and employees to suppliers to regulators and board members and so forth.

With any of those groups, when we’re making decisions or about to take action, that’s going to have an impact on them. There is a need to really be thinking about, “Have I picked up the phone figuratively and talked with that person? Have I let them know that I need to make a decision? I’d like to get their input.” Do the homework of listening to their needs and their concerns as I get ready to move forward. Quite often, leaders have tunnel vision. They’re driven to achieve an organization’s goals. Even an entrepreneur can be driven to achieve certain specific goals.

The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility: Thriving Organizations & Great Results

That process can sometimes steamroll over people, whether those are employees or some customer needs or vendor needs. They would not be very inclusive in that process. That also would violate the dignity of those groups of people. Generous inclusion is an important key in terms of how you treat people. As I said, there are six of these but it really allows a very behavioral focus on dignity. How do you take this concept of feeling and displaying deep regard for others’ dignity and really put it into practice? There are six key ways that you do that that the book describes.

I feel like you’ve got a superpower for looking at leaders, looking at people through this lens. I imagine that people will be very curious to hear how they can learn some of these amazing skills. How do people find you? Can you give your website?

It’s www.MarilynGist.com. There is a Resource tab on there that has information about the webinar, the assessment tools and the book. You can jump on your favorite purveyor of online books and find them. It’s The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility by Marilyn Gist. It’s available wherever books are sold.

Thank you so much for being here. It’s been such a pleasure to get to talk to you. I can’t wait to grab your book and read it and learn more about this very interesting lens that you’ve called out to.

Thank you. It makes a world of difference for leaders in terms of results and outcomes, as well as the health of the organization. More power to everyone with humility.

Thanks.

Thank you, Melanie. Have a good day.

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I’ve been talking with Marilyn Gist and I’m so fascinated by the idea that humility is when a leader feels and displays deep regard for others’ dignity. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with the idea that we have to somehow be meek in order to be humble, that we have to be self-deprecating in order to be humble. I never liked that idea. I like the idea of being able to be secure in my own skin. Also, to care deeply about others and to create space for them in the dialogue, in the world, in the workplace. I have enjoyed my conversation with Marilyn Gist. I think that this idea of creating space fits with everything I talked about in the show around helping people find a voice and helping create feedback loops so that everybody’s voice is important and they get heard. This has been a fascinating interview with Marilyn Gist. I hope it’s helpful to you too. Go experiment.

Important Links:

• Marilyn Gist
• The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility
• Leader Humility

About Marilyn Gist

Author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, Marilyn Gist helps others become the leader everyone admires by creating thriving organizations and great results. She asks us to Imagine a world in which all leaders feel and display a deep regard for others’ dignity. This is what humility means and it helps leaders resolve conflict, increase engagement, and optimize performance. Marilyn speaks and consults widely, based on experience as a scholar, teacher, trainer, and senior leader.

Formerly Associate Dean, Professor of Management, and Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Formation at Seattle University, she began her academic career at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She later joined the University of Washington where she held the Boeing Endowed Professorship of Business. Marilyn earned her BA from Howard University and her MBA and PhD from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a member of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, and the International Women’s Forum.

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