Humble Leadership, Second Edition, 2nd Edition

EIGHT

Humble Leadership Messages: An Allegory

Organizational history provides numerous examples of the heroic innovator who proposes something new and better. The image of the go-it-alone maverick, risking everything with extraordinary confidence and perseverance, will remain a central myth in our past, but what we question now is whether this model of the alone-at-the-top chief decider remains salient at all in our future.

In innovation-driven industries where VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) is embraced, we believe that, as a company matures, isolated, heroic leaders will ultimately suffer if they fail to gather complete information before making decisions. We have argued that what distinguishes the humble leader, ...