Most of us struggle answering questions about “failure” and “weakness” in interviews.
They’re challenging of course because they require vulnerability and brutal honesty.
They require letting go of some of our ego defenses and being authentic.
In other words, they require humility and self-awareness.
To foster a practice of greater humility and awareness, I’m trying out something new and invite you to join me and let me know how it goes!
By now, you’ve probably heard of the benefits of gratitude journaling (and journaling in general). Listing and describing things I’m grateful for has saved me many times in life by helping me pay attention to and appreciate the little things that make life wonderful.
What if we practiced this with intention directed towards humility?
Humility journaling is a reflective process of writing down the things that humbled us each day or week, and then listing what we learned from the situation. This is easy to do as a two column table and a framework like situation and what happened, and what I learned.
The point is paying attention to learning opportunities and growing from them. They can be small or big, for example:
▸ Your assumptions were challenged
▸ A bias or blind-spot came into focus
▸ You pivoted or changed your opinion on something
▸ Your expectations were not met
▸ A situation went differently than you hoped
If this feels challenging to you, and if the word humility makes you squirm, you probably need this!
Over the last few years, I’ve come to recognize this is one of the most valuable skills to foster through continuous reflection as a leader and consultant.
Humility allows you to have greater impact on the people around you because it creates space for stronger relationships and collaboration. Critics suggest that this is weak, that being “right” is important for establishing your expertise or showing that you are “in charge”. I think that shows a lack of awareness of power dynamics in the relationship between either a leader or a consultant in an organization. We are supporters and influencers, but we never make change alone, it simply is not possible.
The more involved we get with any organization or human system, the more the context of everything becomes key. It is the people, their goals, and deeply understanding their enablers and barriers that makes all the difference in what ends up working or not, and to understand those things, we must continuously improve and practice being deeply collaborative, humble, and authentic.
Happy journaling!
