Humility in Leadership

I recently concluded a two day leadership training for a group of top managers.

One of the participants caught my eye. His name was Warren. Warren is the Senior Vice President of the company. He is funny, witty and humble. As he introduced himself, he shared with us his story. He started as a working student. He persevered, worked hard and was determined to become successful. All this paid off as he now holds the rank of the 3rd most powerful man in the company.

Even though he was in the same training as his subordinates, he was always humble enough to acknowledge the mistakes that he has made as a leader. His zeal to become a better one was apparent. He kept an open mind through out the whole training, asking questions when things were not clear and voicing out his opinion when needed. His people spoke highly of him and were thankful for his leadership. It was evident how he was loved by all.

I have trained a lot of leaders that hold middle to high ranking positions and I sometimes get intimidated when I am in front of them.  I see one thing in common (in most of them):   the humility to continuously keep an open mind and learn new things. To assess themselves and see what are the areas they are good at and the areas they need to improve on and most of all the readiness to learn from someone who is younger with lesser experience than them.

No wonder these leaders are where they are at right now because they are humble enough to realize that they may not have all the answers.

I believe the minute you decide to stop learning and feel that you know it all is the end of your opportunity to move forward and moving forward is the direction great leaders take.

Imagine what you can become when you lead with a humble heart.

Make It Count

As a corporate trainer, my work day starts and ends with my audience in mind.

Companies work with me to accomplish an objective:  to enhance their employees image, to instill leadership skills in their team or to simply teach their sales people how to be better sellers in their industry.  I sometimes feel the pressure to change the way people think, forgetting that each of the participants come in for different reasons.

As I ask each of them what they want to learn, all of them come in with a variety of reasons. As I listen to them one by one, my desire is always not just to meet their expectations but to go beyond and make a difference. With that in mind, I move forward to share experiences, best practices and pass on the things I've learned whether it be from my own life or through books I've read and mentors I've met along the way.

During the sessions, I throw in questions that can somehow give me a validation of where they are at in the "learning" zone. There are moments that I say to myself "Mission Accomplished" and times when I feel  I need to dig a little deeper and push a little harder knowing that I only have a few days or hours with them and I want to MAKE IT COUNT.

Then the training comes to an end. I give my final piece of encouragement and wish them success in all their endeavors.  I will never know if our paths will cross again, but hope that somehow I have made my life count!

 Here are some precious notes that I receive from participants.. It makes me love what I do over and over again!

Love this!

Made my heart cry!