The Magic of Humility

Posted by: Jim Petzel 5 years, 10 months ago

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For nearly the last decade I have been an evangelist of Patrick Lencioni’s idea that everyone we hire needs to be humble, hungry and smart. I believe it to my core. In his recent book “The Ideal Team Player” Lencioni outlines why these three traits working in harmony are so critical. He goes on to explain the gaps that are left when even one of the three elements are missing. Lencioni created tags for these gaps that seem to fit so well.

This past week I had the joy of spending a week in Winter Park, Colorado skiing with family and friends. We also drove down the hill one night to have dinner with a close friend and a leader that I have admired for a decade. During that dinner I came to realize that humility is the magic that makes Lencioni’s other characteristics thrive. While the three are equally important, humility gives the other characteristics exponential power.  A lot of us have that fire in the belly that makes us want to succeed and there are probably an equal number of people on the planet that have the emotional intelligence to thrive. Humility, however, is like putting high octane gas into a working engine.

During that dinner with my friend he filled in some gaps in his history that caused me to have a greater understanding of the magic of the first of Lencioni’s traits.  About a decade ago my friend started a church in Denver. When we started going there ten years ago they had about 130 people and they literally met in a creepy old amusement park. Since church leaders are probably viewed by most of us with about as much skepticism as politicians you should know a little more about my friend. 

On an average Sunday today they have 13,000 people and that is only restricted by the four campuses they have in Denver and the one new one in Brussels. The locations can be described as very functional but certainly not fancy by any stretch. One of my friend’s main functions is to insure that there 100 staff members know and understand the culture of their organization and know their mission and embrace it enthusiastically. He however wouldn’t be known by 90% of the people in the church if he passed them on the street.

The reason why he isn’t known is because he chose not to be. He is not the guy up front on Sunday morning because as he put it “we have other people that are better than me.” Even the day to day running of the place is done by other people and he hasn’t carried carry the title of being the guy in charge for most of their history. “I could have gotten the credit for leading a very mediocre church or be part of an amazing church but I couldn’t have both.” Several years ago he became clear on what he is good at and that was finding others and then getting out of their way so that they could succeed.

In a church where you hire 1/3 of the people you really need and under pay them significantly and rely on volunteers for the rest you better have leaders like my friend willing to use humility as the secret ingredient.  No amount of smarts or hunger could replace the benefit of him being humble. In many ways these two other traits likely fought against my friend in his heart and mind for some time. No one gives up credit, power, and control without doing some serious work internally to be convinced that the name on the front of the jersey is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back!

During our leadership training we use the quote from Harry Truman, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t mind who gets the credit. During dinner last week that quote became alive to me. 

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