Day 35: Leadership in Humility

Today is Day 35 which is five weeks of the omer . . . Ha-yom shloshim v'chamesh yamim, she-hem chamishah sh'vuot la-omer.

THE OMER INTERSECTION: Chod + Malchut - Humility and Leadership

As we wrap up our week of humility, we have hopefully worked on letting go a little bit more of our egos, which has hopefully helped us to recognize the part of ourselves that is a part of something bigger that we care about.  I know for myself, I've thought about how I am as a husband, a parent, a rabbi, a son - all sorts of roles - and done a little bit of separation between what I make about me in each of these roles, and what I do that is not about me at all but about these relationships. 

Now we turn the tables of such exploration specifically to the area of leadership.  How do we use our humility to lead?  What I've been finding through these reflections is that it takes a quiet confidence to be humble.  When we have insecurities in our egos, this is when we have the most trouble achieving humility.  In such situations, we tend to need feedback in order to feed our sense of self - to receive validation or support or confirmation that what we are doing is good and appreciated. 

When we are unable to fill ourselves up with what we are doing, it is hard to have true humility about our actions, since we feel the need seek out affirmation.  My mentor from the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, Dr. Michael Zeldin, once met with me to discuss how I was doing in an internship, and we spent a good deal of time talking about confidence.  He asked me where my confidence comes from, and at first I responded with feedback from others.  And he helped me to understand that confidence has to come from within based on being able to analyze one's own actions with the tools of a plethora of theories and best practices.  We take feedback in as a means to assess the work we are doing, but that should not be a referendum on the person we are.

When we have a quiet confidence that comes from within - a sense of who we are, even as we are willing to openly question and analyze and improve upon the work that we do - the feedback we seek becomes more about our shared purposes than about our individual needs.  And this is what it means to lead through humility.  As we ask questions of others and relate to others in the course of trying to make things happen in our world, the key is to not make such interactions about us, but to keep focused on the tasks at hand.  And when we model this in our leadership roles, we lead through humility. 

THE OMER CHALLENGE:

Today is a day to work on our self-confidence.  Think back to the paper-slip activity and focus a bit on the building-up side: "For my sake, the world was created."   Spend a few moments just taking-in an aspect of our world that reminds us that "For my sake, the world was created."  Let this experience remind us that we have positive things to experience in this world and to contribute to it, and that we are worthy of living up to our responsibilities.    

As a VERY BROAD CHALLENGE (I wish I had ideas for how to make this more measurable and concrete, but nothing's popping up and it's time to get the post out).  During the course of the day, in the tasks we attempt, let's work on separating out the validation we crave for our own sense of self from the feedback we need in order to evaluate what we do.  Let us hear feedback openly and not conflate it with who we are but rather allow it to inform what we do.  Practice this, and see if it works for us.  This way, we can be more open to questioning the ways we approach our tasks in ways that might allow us to go about our work/projects/relationships with a bit more humility.  And we might inspire others to do so, as well.