It’s Hard to be Humble, When your Perfect in Every Way…Country singer Mac Davis

Humility is Dead…

Like some of you out there, I enjoy watching the Apprentice.  It’s interesting to watch cut-throat competition and “The Donald” say “you’re fired” to smart people every week.  Watching “The Donald” push people past their limits is sadistically fun…humility was certainly never rewarded on the show, however.

Humility is a virtue that is rarely discussed today in popular culture.  You hardly ever hear anyone talk about it on the left, or on the right.  Even conservative former drug czar Bill Bennett somehow forgot to mention humility in his Book of Virtues a few years ago.

Why don’t we hear many cultural commentators or business leaders talk about humility?  Probably because it just doesn’t fit into our self-affirming, “you can be anything you want to be when you grow up” culture…or does it?

Long Live Humility…

Jim Collins uncovered a somewhat counter intuitive finding (from our culture’s perspective) around humility in his landmark book Good to Great a few years ago.  Collins discovered that the most effective leaders were characterized as humble and strong-willed instead of brash and full of Trump-like hubris.

In his most recent book How the Mighty Fall Collins delves into the reasons why promising organizations and countries fall.  Stage 1 is, fittingly, Hubris Born of Success.

So, humility seems to be a virtue that business folks and even marketers (like me) might want to pay a little more attention to.

Humility is a little tough to pin down, however…and today, we see loads of false humility (which is really just pride).  Wikipedia notes that “True humility” is distinctly different from “false humility,” which consists of deprecating one’s own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from other.  How many times have we heard PR consultants say that in order to “fix” an egregious error with the public, a celebrity needs to go onto Oprah and confess his/her “transgressions” only to see that same celebrity up to the old tricks the next week….clearly they did not mean it.

Kant sees humility as “that meta-attitude that constitutes the moral agent’s proper perspective on himself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agent.”  Aquinas defines humility as consisting in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior (tks to Wikipedia for the philosophical help here).

As humility is so counter to the prevailing culture today, adopting a more humble stance with regards to advertising/marketing promotion might be somewhat radical or breakthrough.  People long for hints of humility & authenticity today and flock in big numbers to brands that try to “keep it real.”  When Dove made a radical departure from traditional beauty advertising with a campaign like Real Beauty a few years ago, the brand shook the entire beauty industry (click here to check out Real Beauty if you have somehow missed if over the past few years).  Some might accuse Dove of pursuing false humility while others would say that Dove has stuck with its purpose led campaign for years (instead of using it as a “one shot deal” for publicity & buzz).

Don’t get me wrong…of course I believe a healthy dose of self-confidence is good.  And, we should all stretch our capabilities and use our talents.  Additionally, we all have to apply for jobs and write those dreaded resumes with loads of puffed up language about ourselves.  But, when the smiling self-help guru legions continually try to sell us on “being proud,” maybe we should listen to see if they ever mention anything about humility (at least once).  If they don’t, we should get suspicious…humility is a virtue for the ages and it deserves to be rediscovered.

So what do you think about humility?

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• How the Mighty Fall (findingforrest.com)