High Growth Humility

Discover what high growth humility is and how understanding and flexing this can help you in your leadership life and inner confidence growth.

Welcome to the first episode of the Strengthen Live podcast!

Join your host Andrea Urquhart, a professional emotion and positive psychology leadership and life coach and mentor who believes in authentic character growth and developing our emotional strength without fakery or toxic hacks!

Today, we're talking about that sweet spot between abandoning ourselves through overplaying humility, and displaying arrogance when we underplay it.

Curious about high growth humility? Listen now.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Strengthen Live Podcast! I'm your host, Andrea Urquhart. This is the place for trailblazing, empathetic leaders who are also recovering people pleasers! If you have a big heart and your passion is supporting others to change their lives for the better, find home and belonging here and in the So It’s Not Just Me Then?! community.

I’m a professional emotion and positive psychology coach and I’ve been working with people from all walks of life, in different nations, for over 35 years. In this podcast, I encourage you with professional - and research backed – insights on growing your emotional strength and intelligence as a leader, wellbeing professional or founder.

Welcome to Episode 1 of Strengthen Live! It’s exciting to be here with you and thank you for listening, for inviting me into your world. 

I’d like to talk about being an expert, positioning and something that I call high growth humility today.

When we’re empaths and leaders, we’re very conscious of what other people feel and think. Sometimes so conscious that we’re very good at making up stories in our heads and emotions about what we think they think or how they are reacting or may react to something. Sound familiar? Things like projecting your own inner story onto theirs about anything from finances, to likes and dislikes, or what they may be thinking about you and how you’re interacting with them.

Truth is, that sometimes, we’re so busy with our own inner story distortions about them - that we actually miss what’s really going on in them. Have you ever been totally surprised when someone shared their thoughts with you, and it wasn’t at all what you expected?! 

Being empathetic is a character trength. But we can overplay and underplay our strengths. I’ll share more about that as a principle in  future episodes. When we overplay empathy, it can get us into things like people pleasing and also encourage us to make assumptions about what’s going on in others. When empathy is good at listening and providing unconditional positive regard (that’s being a safe, non-judgemental person who doesn’t make assumptions), then empathy is operating well through us.

As leaders, founders and professional wellbeing nerds, positioning ourselves as leaders and experts is key. But for empaths, this is hard because we’re so conscious of how we may feel that others could react. Owning our expertise and learning how to sit comfortably and confidently with that is a deep and courageous journey for people with Empathy as a significant character strength.

So I want to share with you about what I call high growth humility today, because embracing this can change your relationship with your expertise, your confidence and how you position yourself.

Before we get into that, I bet you’re already uncomfortable with me using the phrase “position yourself”?!

Many empathetic professionals and leaders, as I said earlier, also have a tendency to want to people please – or at least, to receive positive feedback from others. Conflict, contention, and ambiguity aren’t comfortable for most people, but for people with Empathy as a particular strength, these can send our thoughts, emotions and physical wellbeing into a spin.

If you’re running your own wellbeing practice, founding a business or leader others in any way, owning your leadership is important. How you see yourself affects how your present yourself. And this, in turn, is reflected back in the responses of others to you – whatever the interaction they may be having with you. Whether just meeting you for the first time, getting to know you, seeking your help or perhaps, disagreeing with you.

Positioning yourself as a leader is not about being arrogant. It’s simply owning the expertise, role and strengths that you have, and choosing to stand in those. 

Of course, here at Strengthen, we’re all for authenticity and integrity, so positioning ourselves as leaders involves inner work- especially when authenticity and integrity are also core values for us.

Positioning is also about growing the confidence to be the leader that only we can be – with our unique combination of strengths, gifts and personality. 

High Growth Humility is a phrase I use to describe that sweet spot between arrogance and humility. When I speak with successful business or faith leaders, and equally when I mentor and coach wellbeing professionals, the ones who develop as healthy, effective leaders and trailblaze in their mission with strength and confidence have these things in common:

1)    They’re lifelong learners who know that they can learn from everyone, every situation and every triumph or challenge in life. They don’t believe in perfection as a goal, they know that remaining humble enough to learn is part of what strengthens them.

2)    When they see a characteristic or skill that someone else embodies that they feel they can learn from, they are not afraid to ask questions and seek answers from that person. Positioning themselves as a leader does not mean they are some all knowing guru. They are humble enough to seek wisdom and insight from others.

3)    For them, humility is about honouring others and honouring their own potential. This means that they do not step back, but rather lift others up and empower them to move forward. As they do this, they too rise.

High Growth Humility is an attitude, a way of living and growing, and, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a sweet spot between meekness and arrogance that enables any leader to both own their own growth and strengths story, and to make peace with the journeying aspect of leadership. 

A person with high growth humility is more likely to inspire others to also grow and reach for more too. They are more likely to share their light in a way that others find it easier to receive from. High growth humility leaders also grow more confident and discerning in who they invite to journey with them and to be around them.

The great news is that humility is a character strength that each of us, leader or not, has inside us. For some of us, we may lean on that a little more than others. Of course, as with all strengths, we can overplay it or underplay it. An overplay of humility leads to us abandoning ourselves. Abandoning our gifts and our seat at the tables in life and leadership that are open to us or waiting for us to step up to. Equally, when we underplay humility, the arrogance barometer rises and that love of learning tends to drop to rock bottom.

But because this is a character strength within us, we can work with our humility to bring it to that sweet spot – not abandoning ourselves and not losing ourselves in arrogance.

One caveat I would say here, is that it’s very interesting to observe how other people respond to people who underplay and overplay humility. People who overplay their own humility, so, they live in a mindset of their own inadequacy, really don’t cope well with people who live by high growth humility. They get jealous, and that unapologetic confidence of high growth humility can really press their buttons!

In a similar way, people who underplay humility and are quite arrogant in many of their interactions and in their mindset, can be really dismissive of that high growth humility confidence. That’s because they’re so focused on their own “rightness” that they don’t see the wisdom and the gravitas of the person who is living in that high growth humility mindset and strength.

This is where it’s really important for us as leaders and wellbeing professionals to be aware not only of our own inner story and personal development, but also the fact that others have their own inner story and relationship with themselves too. 

Most of the time, how we all respond to each other is influenced by our own inner stories and experiences. This is why it’s so important for us to own ours and work with that. The more aware we are of our own inner story, the more we’re able to work with others and meet them with unconditional positive regard. That’s without assumption, allowing them to be safe and also providing that holistic environment where they can be themselves.

And if, as we’re walking in our high growth humility with confidence, others react from their own sense of inadequacy or arrogance, we see it for what it is. And most importantly, we don’t take it personally.

 Now that’s something to work on isn’t it?! 

Join me next time, for more insights on growing your confidence and emotional intelligence as a leader, founder or wellbeing professional. 

You can discover how to work 1:1 with me, my online courses and the So It’s Not Just Me Then?! Membership community at strengthenlive.com

For now, I invite you to notice humility in yourself and others in your world over the next week. How are you reacting to it? And what do you notice about others’ sense of inadequacy, arrogance or high growth humility?

Today’s episode is written, narrated and produced by Andrea Urquhart.

Music by VItalii Iegorov Twisterium via Pixabay