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In everything you do be humble.
Leadership is something I’ve been taught since the beginning of everything… or so it seems.
As a Boy Scout when I was younger, leadership is one of their core principles. There I was taught the Scout Oath and Law. Both fail to mention being humble.
I grew from scouting to being a United States Marine. Leadership seemed to be the one constant from day one. I was taught leadership principles, traits, and core values. Of 5 traits, 14 principles, and 3 core values, not one mentioned humility.
After the Marine Corps, I wanted to be a cop. In my training, I didn’t find humility anywhere.
The first time I started learning humility was when I started studying Jui-Jitsu. Humility in Jui-Jitsu is more a form of survival than anything else. You think you are going to go into a fighting place and be the loudmouth, you are going to get humbled, fast. You get to learn the hard way.
Then as a Security Contractor, I started to learn a little more about humility. Trying to be “a quite professional” means you have to be humble.
Now from a Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink, I finally am getting training in humility. He has an easy saying, “Be humble, or get humbled.”
There are a lot of places you can get away with being egotistical. And many people can get away with it for a lot longer than anyone around them would like, but sooner or later, they will get humbled.
If you want to be the leader in your family, a leader at work, or a leader in life, you better learn to be humble.
As a Marine, I was pretty good at war fighting. I did not like the administrative or uniform stuff. In fact, I was outright defiant of it. I never found my humility as a leader. But the leaders I loved the most around and above me were the ones to come at me with humility. Since I was good at my job as an infantry Marine, I knew a lot about my weapon system, and tactics, and continually studied them. In fact, I read manuals and books so much I was given the call sign “Brain”.
The leaders that were humble would tell me about how good I was with my weapons and how they aren’t as good with them or knew anything about some of the technicalities of my job. But they asked me what I needed to be better at that job and used that to help me be better at the rest of the administrative and rear echelon stuff that I wasn’t good at and hated. I was never the uniform-wearing poster boy that you think of when you think of a Marine. I was the dirt on my face, rifle carrying warrior part.
As a civilian, I still shoot competitions and go to firearms classes and even teach self-defense with a firearm from time to time. While I’m always one of the best, there is always someone better and someone I can learn from.
In fact, as a Marine, we all take great pride in our skill with our rifles. And every time you are on the range there is always a top shooter. And I was always one of the best there as well. But, be humble or get humbled. Every time we went to the range I was never top shot… I was always second. It didn’t matter if we went with the platoon (30 Marines), my company (100 Marines), or even the battalion (almost 1,000 Marines) I was always second by a point out of 350. Very humbling.
This week, while you go about your life, try to practice humility. I know it isn’t something we do very well or practice, but if you can lose your ego humility is easy.
Try it,
Ben