What does a very successful US Nuclear Submarine Commander, a Spinal Surgeon, a Silicon Valley Start-up, and a major hospital all have in common, apart from their success? In these particular examples it is Humble Leadership, as described by Edgar and Peter Schein in their just released (2018) book ‘Humble Leadership – the power of relationships, openness and trust’, published by Berrett-Koehler.
The authors view Humble Leadership as requiring a certain kind of mindset, certain attitudes toward working with others, and skills in working with groups Their purpose in writing this book is to move reader to think as much, or more, about the process of building relationships at work as they do about the content of the work itself (p. 130).
I found this book appealed to me because of two main aspects. Firstly it dealt with the “soft skills” of leadership that are rarely written about in such a practical way, and secondly, it provided a wealth of examples that made it so much easier to contextualize the concept into many different settings. The chapter that provided some “how-to’s” and resource links was pretty handy also.
A key tenet of the book is to encourage leaders to move from Level 1 leadership (traditional transactional approaches) to Level 2 leadership (personal relationship based), and potentially in some rare cases to Level 3 leadership (emotionally intimate total mutual commitment).
This book was easy to read (I read it over a few evenings) and very practical. It is current and the concepts easy to contextualize. Do yourself a favor…
Warrick Long, Lecturer, Avondale Business School