Kruse's Keys: Read "Turn the Ship Around" To Emancipate Your Company and Build Lasting Success

I first heard about “Turn the Ship Around” on college classmate Scott Macke’s Service Academy Business Mastermind podcast. In it, he interviewed the author, retired Captain David Marquet, and delved into both his writing process and his revolutionary leadership philosophy.

I let the book rest dormant on my amazon wishlist for months, however, because of my unfair bias against submariners. Despite some of my best friends being bubbleheads, I just didn’t associate leadership with that community. I wasn’t even a chapter into the book when I realized how misguided my bias had been.

There’s one episode in particular that sold me on Marquet as a leader that I would follow. My emphasis is on ‘as a leader’ because really, someone can put together a snappy, clever, well-marketed leadership product but people don’t follow a product--they follow a person. About midway through the book, Marquet shares the story of a nighttime passage the the strait of Malacca. This is a high risk evolution that nearly resulted in a collision with a tugboat if not for the exemplary and timely actions of one of his petty officers. As soon as the sub was clear, Captain Marquet immediately awarded the petty officer a Navy Achievement Medal on the spot. This floored me because despite it being a recognition that any Commanding Officer can give, I’d never seen it awarded other than at the end of someone’s tour. I’d say with confidence that my personal observations are indicative of trends across the Navy. If anything, commanding officers today tend to be more worried about awards inflation (i.e., too many O-4s getting DSMS for example) than actually providing timely recognition. Beyond that, I’ve had to put myself up for every award I’ve even gotten and usually end of tour awards arrive a year after you’ve already PCS’d (i.e., moved to your next assignment for my civilian readers). So I appreciated that Marquet not only cut through the bureaucracy (he did the write up afterwards, but also that he quickly and publicly recognized exemplary conduct. Marquet also made sure to have family members present whenever possible for awards--something commands often overlook.

As you can see in my "Key Takeaways" section, this book is packed with concrete actions leaders can take today to emancipate their subordinates (more on why Marquet prefers “emancipate” to the ubiquitous “empower” below.

See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Key Quotes:

• “You may be able to ‘buy’ a person’s back with a paycheck, position, power, or fear, but a human being’s genius, passion, loyalty, and tenacious creativity are volunteered only. The world’s greatest problems will be solved by passionate, unleashed “volunteers.” -Stephen R. Covey (xxi)
• “Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves. -Stephen R. Covey (xxi)
• On the Navy’s short term focus: “Hundreds of captains [make] thousands of decisions to optimize the performance of their commands for their tour and their tour alone. If they did anything to for the long run it was because of an enlightened sense of duty, not because there was anything in the system that rewarded them for it. We didn’t associate an officer’s leadership effectiveness with how well his unit performed after he left. We We didn’t associate an officer’s leadership effectiveness with how often his people got promoted two, three, or four years hence. We didn’t even track that kind of information, All that mattered was performance in the moment. (14)
• “When the performance of a unit goes down after an officer leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.” (15)
• “Don’t move information to authority, move authority to information.” (49)
• “Taking care of your people... [means] giving them every available and advantage to achieve their aims in life.” (172)

Key Takeaways:

• One of the book’s strengths are the “how to” questions at the end of each chapter. Sometimes these include exercises you can use in your own company such as “Embedding cultural change” or “How to identify training gaps within your company/department”
• Applying this all in your own organization: ID Excellence creation points. Internal and external processes (customer and physical world). What decisions do the owners of those process NEED to make to create excellence? What’s it take to get those owners to make those decisions? Drive to the intersection of technical competence, organizational clarity, and authority to make the decisions. (207)
• How do you build company/unit/squadron/embassy/directorate identity? Require employees/subordinates to own both the problem AND the solution to it (xx).
• Why is “empowerment” not the answer? Spoiler alert: Marquet prefers the term “emancipate.” A follower has limited decision-making authority but more detrimentally little incentive to give it his/her all. The fact that it takes the boss to empower ‘you’ is inherently disempowering (xxvi)
• The cycle to transform an organization to leader-leader begins with a triple track parallel effort that is repeated continuously: divesting control, building technical competence, and strengthening organizational clarity--all while maintaining responsibility (xxx).
• The Navy’s focus is short term--officers and units are effectively evaluated in three year cycles (i.e., tours). The success of the organization lives and dies with the leader. Marquet points out that in our military today “when the performance of a unit goes down after an officer leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.” The military’s worship for the cult of the individual is so strongly ingrained, that Marquet’s observation never occurred to me. In finishing “Turn the Ship Around,” I’ve become convinced that Marquet’s leader-leader model is one that could enable radical transformation within the U.S. military. Some questions to consider include:
• Should the FITREPs of commanding officers only take into account their performance during their tour? 
• Or is how the command performs after he/she leaves also a notable indicator of their leadership?
• How can organizations operating on continuous turnover optimize performance?
• How would you improve the military’s evaluation/fitrep system?
• Begin your arrival to a leadership position with a focus on your people’s actions and interactions (20)
• What are your inbrief questions? That is, as a new leader what questions do you ask of your employees to understand your organization? Conversely, what questions do you ask new employees who check-in with you? 
• What are the things you are hoping I don’t change?
• What are the things you secretly hope I do change?
• What are the good things about our company we should build on?
• If you were me what you would do first?
• Why aren’t we doing better?
• What are your personal goals for your tour here (for the next two years in a civilian company)?
• What impediments do you have to doing your job?
• What will be our biggest challenge in accomplishing XXX large project?
• What are biggest frustrations with how the company is currently run? 
• What’s the best thing I can do for you? (24)
• Lead with curiosity, ask people about their roles not as a test but as you would an outside person who just wants to know what they do--earn trust before you start critiquing. (26)
• Leaders involve widest audience for recognition. If you have an award, give the awardee time to invite their family and/or friends but also give it in a timely manner, or on the spot if appropriate. (33)
• Importance of psychological ownership (37)
• Two barriers to delegating decision-making: lack of subordinate technical competence and misunderstanding of organization goals. (58-9)
• Good decisions are a combination of technical competence and clear grasp of an organization’s purpose/interest. (60)
• There’s power in a leader embracing the “caring but not caring” paradox. This means caring about those under you and your company at the expense of consequences to yourself. (64)
• Instilling the idea of the 3-name rule: Good morning Mr. Smith, I am Jack Kruse, welcome to Bell. When this becomes an ingrained habit, it goes a long way toward embedding a culture of ownership--that is, I associate the most basic of interactions--a greeting--with my own identity and that of my company. When I was the wing safety officer I started using the tagline “I am aviation safety” after reading an article about a clothing company whose employees espoused a similar ethos. (68)
• One step toward emancipation is shifting the way information is communicated. This involves shifting subordinates from passive to active: i.e., ‘I’d like to’ or ‘can we’ to ‘I intend to’ or ‘I will’ (83)
• Eliminate top-down control mechanisms to build ownership--do you have unnecessary meetings? (97)
• A resilient company has employees that think out loud to build context. (103)
• In the Navy, we often dread inspections, Inspector General inspections come to mind. The idea of embracing inspectors shows an important mindset because employees ideally can mine inspectors for best practices they’ve seen elsewhere. (112)
• Shift to deliberate action: Before any action pause, vocalize and gesture. This can also be used in administrative scenarios where these three steps are done prior to approving purchasing or submitting requests. We have an obvious parallel in naval aviation where we say “slow is fast and fast is slow” and “no fast hands in the cockpit.” (124)
• Incorporating “we learn” into your organizations creed. Learning is more active than training. The purpose of training is to build technical competence to drive down decision making lower. (129)
• Use an off-site exercise idea to determine what training is needed in your department or company. (132)
• To drive engagement = certify, don’t brief. The military is rife with briefings prior to evolutions, exercises etc. Marquet points out a major deficiency with a ‘briefing mentality’--it can become a passive exercise where everyone zones out as the briefer drones on. I experienced this first hand as a naval aviator, often when I wasn’t giving the brief, I would just lay back and let the guy/gal in charge do all the work. When you certify everyone is safe and ready to complete a task you switch to interaction between the lead briefer and those under him/her. (141)
• The power of repetition cannot be understated in inculcating a new message or program within a company. (149)
• Give your people goals, not methods. Having prescribed methods unnecessarily constrains your team’s creativity. (159)
• Guiding principles should guide decisions for your organizations. (179)
• For military leaders looking to get their subordinates to think long term/strategically: have them write their end of tour awards at the beginning of their tours. Early on his tour as Commanding Officer, Marquet sat down individually with his junior officers and gave them a week to write their end of tour awards. Then he met with them for a mentoring session to go through their prospective/desired objectives. You can probably guess that while most people initially come up with impressive sounding achievements they fall short in coming up with measurable/verifiable objectives. That because it’s hard work to think critically and take the time to measure your work. This is also where you have a chance to identify gaps in your organization (i.e., places where there’s no measuring system in place) and shift from a mentor-mentee relationship to a mentor-mentor one. Ideally, this process develops both the leader and his subordinate. For those in the corporate world, Marquet recommends, having your team members write out 1, 2 and 3 year performance evaluations. What methods have you found effective in pushing your team to think long term? (190-3)
• Blind obedience is a symptom of a disempowered organization and can cripple mission accomplishment. Encourage questions! (200)
• Great reference table: Do This, Not That (205)

Key References

• “Start with Why” (46)
• “Built to Last” (56)
• “Visual Display of Quantitative Information” (75)
• Out of the Crisis TQL (98)
• Control and Chaos (126)
• Briefing (137)
• What is NIPO’s legacy? Motto? (183)
• Gamification (187)
• Chapter 2 of 7 Habits of Highly Effective people: ‘Begin With The End In Mind.”
• Empowerment and Emancipation (212)
• https://www.davidmarquet.com/
• While Marquet focuses on military units, this is easily applicable to any unit/company/organization with a high turnover. Embassies come to mind, as well as the various sections within an embassy. For military offices in an embassy, such as the Offices of Security Cooperation (OSCs, ODCs etc), the difficulty is applying Marquet’s thesis is that there aren’t currently good metrics by which to evaluate one office in comparison to the other. The Combatant Commander in all likelihood knows who his/her best OSC Chief is (i.e., the individual) but there’s not currently any way to evaluate an ODC as a whole. A Battle E equivalent would likely take into account IG inspection results, Physical Fitness...what else?

Kruse's Keys: Read 'Essentialism' Because Less CAN Be Better (Greg McKeown)

I listened to this one as an audio book that I checked out from my local public library (SIDE NOTE: public libraries--one of America’s great treasures).  One one hand I loved the convenience of listening to this tale during my daily commute into DC; on the other hand, audibooks are the worst format if you are a notetaker and chronic highlighter.  So, really the worst format for me, especially considering the fact that you lose access to the book and any quasi bookmarks you made when you check the “book” back into the library.  

All that to say that my audiobook reviews are sure to be much less robust than those I actually read.  

Essentialism is a book for anyone who feels overwhelmed at any level of their life.  The author’s contention is that we all have too much going on in our lives--at work, at play, in our relationships and in our things.  This book gives the reader the tools and philosophical background in order to pare away the excess.  Ultimately, McKeown espouses the expansion of German designer and academic Dieter Ram’s mantra “less but better” (weniger aber besser) into one’s life at every level.  Whether or not one has the courage to actually apply it holistically is another question but I’d argue that we’d all do well to take stock of our lives and see where doing less but better might liberate us.  

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• “LESS BUT BETTER” This is the central point of Essentialism.  Shedding off burdensome layers of your life at all levels (time, mental, physical, etc.) so that you can be and do better by concentrating on what is actually important.
• Just saying “no” (without a qualifier or reason) is okay.  You don’t owe anyone a reason.  
• Focus on where you can contribute most and cut away everything else ruthlessly.
• This book pairs well with the seminal Deep Work by Cal Newport (my review is here).

KEY QUOTES:

• Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
• “The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.”
• “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.
• “Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.”
• “the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”
• “As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

KEY REFERENCES:

Fast Co Interview with Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams 10 Commandments of Good Design

Humilitas: My Summary with Kindle Notes and Highlights

2015 Reading List

Dickson takes a deep academic look at the history of humility and its shift from an ancient term of denigration to an aspirational one.  Most usefully, he links and develops the ways in which humility can make one a more effective leader.  Unfortunately today humility is all too often ignored virtue--Dickson, however, does an admirable job in bringing it back to the cultural forefront.

Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership by John Dickson

You have 49 highlighted passages

Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself. More simply, you could say the humble person is marked by a willingness to hold power in service of others.Read more at location 167

Wise leaders hold nobility with humility. Overbearing ego and debilitating self-abasement are generally avoided in all wisdom traditions. Many traditions call for balance. I would suggest a further step, also found in the ancient wisdom writings: that you look beyond balance, that you embrace the paradox of strength in weakness to find your true weight as a leader.12Read more at location 174

Second, humility is willing. It is a choice. Otherwise, it is humiliation. Finally, humility is social. It is not a private act of self-deprecation—banishing proud thoughts, refusing to talk about your achievements and so on. I would call this simple “modesty". But humility is about redirecting of your powers, whether physical, intellectual, financial or structural, for the sake of others.Read more at location 178

doubt it is controversial to describe leadership as the art of inspiring others in a team to contribute their best toward a goal. We might quibble over the wording—and I am calling this a description rather than a definition—but I suspect most would agree with the three main aspects of leadership identified here.Read more at location 238

Art. Leadership is more an art than a science.Read more at location 241

Others. The second part of the description is equally straightforward. Leadership is fundamentally about others.Read more at location 246

people”—to use Professor J. P. Kotter’s language, “motivating and inspiring” them.1 “The real power of effective leadership,” writes Brigadier Jim Wallace, former head of Australian special forces, “is maximising other people’s potential.”2 Goal. The third obvious aspect of leadership is that it is oriented toward a clear goal. There is something fundamentally aspirational and idealistic about leadership.Read more at location 264

Tools of leadership If leadership can be described as the art of inspiring others in a team to contribute their best to a goal, what are the “tools” at the leader’s disposal? Again, I doubt there will be much disagreement when I say that there are basically four.Read more at location 283

Ability. Leaders tend to be people who have excelled in some important part of the organization’s business. Read more at location 286

Authority. What I mean by authority is the structural powers handed to leaders by an organization—the power to hire and fire, set directions, approve budgets and overrule colleagues where there is disagreement. Read more at location 294

Persuasion. Good leaders tend not to rely on structural authority but instead have a knack of winning people over to their vision of things. Read more at location 306

Example. This is a deliberately broad category that includes everything from the leader’s listening ear to his work ethic to a courteous tone toward subordinates.  Read more at location 320

said that all of us tend to believe the views of people we already trust.  Read more at location 339

Leadership is not about popularity. It is about gaining people’s trust and moving them forward. Read more at location 355

massive influence can be exerted with minimal structural authority as long as maximal persuasion and life example exist.Read more at location 381

leadership is fundamentally about relationships  Read more at location 403

Humbly acknowledging limitations and refusing to engage in competency extrapolation are not signs of weakness. They demonstrate realism and are therefore strengths. Read more at location 474

titled I Told Me So, philosophy professor Gregg Elshof explores the ubiquitous nature of self-deception in public and private life, in secular and religious communities. Read more at location 493

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) was a supremely gifted philosopher, historian and biblical scholar, as well as being a highly accomplished musician. Read more at location 652

The Quest of the Historical Jesus Read more at location 654

In his autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, Read more at location 658

Needless to say, arrogance is as ugly as humility is beautiful.Read more at location 771

Humility is not an ornament to be worn; it is an ideal that will transform.Read more at location 775

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that in a society that placed such a high value on honour, humility was rarely, if ever, considered virtuous. In the 147 pithy maxims of the Delphic Canon (6th century BC), considered by ancient Greeks to be the sum and substance of the ethical life, there is no mention of the theme of, let alone the word, “humility". The range of moral advice found in the Delphic Canon is impressive: • “Control yourself.” • “Help your friends.” • “Practise prudence.”Read more at location 815

“Return a favour.” • “Nothing to excess.” • “Act on knowledge.” • “Honour good people.” • “Don’t curse your sons.” • “Rule your wife.” • “Mete out justice.” • “Despise no one.” • “Worship divinity.” • “Don’t mock the dead.” • “Don’t let your reputation go.” • “Respect the elder.” • “Respect yourself.” • “Die for your country.” • “Don’t trust fortune.”Read more at location 821

Ancient Israel, no less than ancient Greece, was an honour-shame society. Humility before God was appropriate, of course, as was humility before judges, kings and priests, but lowering yourself before an equal or lesser in early biblical times would not have seemed fitting.Read more at location 926

Perhaps reflecting on the Maker’s soft spot for the downtrodden, one text from the second century BC urges humility toward both the great and the lowly. The Jerusalem sage Yeshua Ben Sira told his students: “Humble your head before the great. Incline your ear to the poor and return their greeting in humility.”  The first line is to be expected: everyone knew you should be lowly before the great. The final expression is striking and may be the first attempt in history to use the word “humility” to describe how ordinary people should treat equals (or, in this case, a social inferior).Read more at location 937

But only once do you get an explicit statement: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. “Yoke” is a common way of referring to a rabbi’s system of teaching,Read more at location 971

another occasion Jesus seems to have delighted in turning upside-down ancient notions of greatness and servitude: Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man [his favourite way of referring to himself] did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.7Read more at location 981

Interestingly, what established humility as a virtue in Western culture was not Jesus’ persona exactly, or even his teaching, but rather his execution—or, more correctly, his followers’ attempt to come to grips with his execution.Read more at location 992

Logically, they had just two options. Either Jesus was not as great as they had first thought, his crucifixion being evidence of his insignificance, or the notion of “greatness” itself had to be redefined to fit with the fact of his seemingly shameful end.Read more at location 1013

Christians took the other option. For them the crucifixion was not evidence of Jesus’ humiliation (humilitas) but proof that greatness can express itself in humility (humilitas), the noble choice to lower yourself for the sake of others. The first datable reference to this innovation in ethical reasoning comes from a letter written by the apostle Paul to the Christians in the Roman colony of Philippi in northern Greece. The letter is dated to about the year 60, almost exactly the same time as Seneca penned his morbid account of crucifixion quoted above. The contrast is astonishing. In the quotation that follows Paul urges his readers to live in humility, choosing to think of others as better than themselves. He then drives the point home by quoting a hymn, presumably one known and sung in Philippi, that speaks of Jesus’ humilitas on the cross: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus [then comes the hymn]:Read more at location 1025

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death   —even death on a cross!10Read more at location 1035

A curious sign of this strange reversal of thinking is found in Sir Edmund Hillary’s decision to mark his achievement by leaving a small crucifix on the summit of Everest. I don’t know why Hillary did this; he wasn’t an overtly religious man. Perhaps it was a token of his own humility, trying to honour a “higher power” at the moment of his own triumph. Then again, maybe it was just the one symbol of Western civilization that he could fit into his small pack. In any case, it is worth noting that what to the ancient mind would have seemed a perverse symbol of accomplishment, to the modern mind makes perfect sense: of course you would put a cross at the highest point of the world!Read more at location 1056

Put another way, while we certainly don’t need to follow Christ to appreciate humility or to be humble, it is unlikely that any of us would aspire to this virtue were it not for the historical impact of his crucifixion on art, literature, ethics, law and philosophy. Our culture remains cruciform long after it stopped being Christian.Read more at location 1087

The humility built into the very idea of the clinical trial: I don’t know whether this treatment based on anecdotal observation and consistent with my theories really works is the opposite of the argument from authority.”4Read more at location 1153

This generating effect of humility, whether in science or business, is beautifully described by the great literary critic G. K. Chesteron, in his cheeky book Orthodoxy. In his battle against early twentieth-century rationalism and self-reliance, which he believed was sapping the energy out of religion, the arts and life itself, Chesterton argued that human pride is in fact the engine of mediocrity. It fools us into believing that we have “arrived", that we are complete, that there is little else to learn. Humility, by contrast, he said, reminds us that we are small and incomplete and so urges us on toward the heights of artistic, scientific and societal endeavour:Read more at location 1159

Instead, I mean opening yourself up to the vulnerability of being wrong, receiving correction and asking others how they think you could do better.Read more at location 1190

language, she has learnt humilitas. In his book Leading Change John P. Kotter explains how he tracked the careers of 115 of his former students from Harvard Business School.Read more at location 1207

Marcel’s success to the way he gave humble attention to the difficulties and mistakes he endured through the years. “He reflected on good times and bad,” writes Kotter, “and tried to learn from both. Confronting his mistakes, he minimized the arrogant attitudes that often accompany success. With a relatively humble view of himself, he watched more closely and listened more carefully than did most others.”7 Humility generates learning and growth.Read more at location 1211

One thing I know from undergraduate psychology and from years of counseling in a church context is that, in the end, nothing is more valuable to us, and value-adding, than good relationships. Knowing that we are loved and valued by those we love and value is the predictor of a healthy sense of self-worth.Read more at location 1242

Note: So true 

Relationships are where security is really found. And since humility— holding your power for the good of others—can only enhance our relationships, I feel confident saying that humility not only signals security, it fosters it as well.Read more at location 1248

It is a fascinating truth worthy of every leader’s reflection: mistakes of execution are rarely as damaging to an organization, whether corporate, ecclesiastical or academic, as a refusal to concede mistakes, apologize to those affected and redress the issue with generosity and haste.Read more at location 1273

Jim Collins’ follow-up to Good to Great, his 2009 book How the Mighty Fall Read more at location 1276

Stephen R. Covey, the author of the bestselling The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, writes in a more recent book: Humility truly is the mother of all virtues. It makes us a vessel, a vehicle, an agent instead of “the source” or the principal. It unleashes all other learning, all growth and process. With the humility that comes from being principle-centered, we’re empowered to learn from the past, have hope for the future, and act with confidence in the present.9Read more at location 1277

According to Aristotle, arguments work—or don’t work—because of three, interrelated factors: logos, the intellectual dimension; pathos, the emotional or personal dimension; and ethos, the social and ethical dimension of persuasion.Read more at location 1315

Pathos is the part of a message that appeals directly to our inner self, to our emotional and aesthetic needs.Read more at location 1324

is a simple fact of social psychology that we tend to believe people we like and trust; moreover, whom we find ourselves liking and trusting in the first place is itself hugely influenced by our upbringing, education, social class, circle of friends and so on.Read more at location 1335

you hear it but too often overlooked by leaders seeking to influence those in their care: The perceived character of the persuader is central to his powers of persuasion.Read more at location 1345

Mere reputation cannot match true character.Read more at location 1357

The chapter opens this way: “Business is tied together by its systems of communication. This communication … depends more on the spoken word than it does on the written word; and the effectiveness of the spoken word hinges not so much on how people talk as on how they listen.”5Read more at location 1373

Brigadier Wallace started out as a captain in the elite Special Air Service. Some of the stories he tells of SAS training and missions seem straight out of the movies.  Most people want to be led, and there is therefore a natural momentum in favour of the leader. But what continually gets in the way is ego. Where we can’t control that, suppress it, then people quickly realise it’s about us, and any natural advantage fades and leadership becomes hard work. The real power of effective leadership is maximising other people’s potential, which inevitably demands also ensuring that they get the credit. When our ego won’t let us build another person up, when everything has to build us up, then the effectiveness of the organisation reverts to depending instead on how good we are in the technical aspects of what we do. And we have stopped leading and inspiring others to great heights.3Read more at location 1502

That day helped us to believe that a music career was not just for supermen inhabiting unapproachable glory; it was for people just like us. The inspirational (and aspirational) effect of humility is real.Read more at location 1541

In a morally and religiously diverse culture such as ours, humility is a much-needed key to harmony.Read more at location 1546

Humility applied to convictions does not mean believing things any less; it means treating those who hold contrary beliefs with respect and friendship.Read more at location 1597

G. K. Chesterton made precisely the point I am trying to emphasize: What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about the truth. This has been exactly reversed … We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.Read more at location 1609

There is a failure of ethical imagination in our culture that probably makes my argument sound quaint and idealistic. We have forgotten how to flex two mental muscles at the same time: the muscle of moral conviction and the muscle of compassion to all regardless of their morality. Secular society no less than religion often operates on a narrow-minded logic: you can only love those whose lives you approve of. You can only be friends with people who agree with you. The logic can take you in two directions. The religious version reduces the number of people it loves—to match the few lifestyles it approves. The secular version increases the number of lifestyles it approves to the point of accepting virtually everything, thus fulfilling G. K. Chesterton’s famous quip about open-mindedness: “An open mind is like an open mouth: its purpose is to bite on something nourishing. Otherwise, it becomes like a sewer, accepting everything, rejecting nothing.”6Read more at location 1624

But there is a third way, based on a different logic. It’s where we learn to respect and care even for those with whom we profoundly disagree. We maintain our convictions but choose never to allow them to become justification for thinking ourselves better than those with contrary convictions. We move beyond mere tolerance to true humility, the key to harmony at the social level.Read more at location 1635

CHAPTER 11 Steps How It’s Possible to Become (More) Humble Read more at location 1639

It is deceptively simple: We are shaped by what we love.Read more at location 1654

We are shaped by what we admire.Read more at location 1669

More important than any of the tips below is the observation that the journey to attaining a measure of humility probably begins with the simple recognition of its inherent beauty. Ponder the aesthetic quality of the virtue, observe it in those you respect and then watch it grow in yourself.Read more at location 1669

Reflect on the lives of the humble.Read more at location 1672

More important than books, of course, are the people in our lives who exhibit humility. Reflect on them. I trust most readers will be able to think of a few people around them who hold their power for the good of others before themselves. My suggestion is that you watch them closely, talk to them about their decisions and try to emulate them.Read more at location 1687

Third, conduct thought experiments to enhance humility. A thought experiment is an imaginative exercise designed to open up the possibilities of a dilemma and so bring clarity.  Read more at location 1694

Thought experiments can help develop humility in business and personal settings by imagining humble courses of action in advance of confronting potentially tense situations.Read more at location 1704

Fourth, act humbly. This piece of advice may sound a little crude and simplistic but it works. Just force yourself on occasion to act humbly. I am not talking about “pretending". I am recommending that you develop the humility muscle by exercising it, even if it doesn’t feel up to the task.Read more at location 1712

My fifth tip flows from the previous one: invite criticism. Invite criticism from friends and colleagues.Read more at location 1731

I am not advocating a horizontal approach to leadership. I firmly believe that lines of responsibility and authority ought to be respected in healthy organizations. I am simply pointing out that allowing constructive criticism and encouraging it at the team level is one powerful way to foster a little humility.  Read more at location 1753

Finally, forget about being humble. In offering these “tips” for cultivating humility, I am reminded of something C. S. Lewis, the famous Oxford don and author of the Chronicles of Narnia, said about the truly humble person. He insisted that humility is quite unlike the property of, for example, having brown hair. It is not something you style in yourself or even especially notice in others. You don’t suddenly meet someone and think, “Wow! What dazzling humility!” It is a rather low-key virtue. It often takes a while to spot in others, partly because the truly humble person is not at all concerned about appearing humble. He is not thinking of himself at all. Lewis put it this way: Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. Read more at location 1757

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.  Read more at location 1770