Tag: humility

Being New and Embracing Humility (9-6-23)

I took a new role about 3 months ago, so for the next few weeks I want to explore things I’ve learned from that experience.  We will start with being new and embracing humility.

I was competent in my last role.  I knew what was going on.  I knew how to solve problems.  I knew who to reach out to for different things.  I felt awesome about myself.  Then, I started my new role and all of that was gone over night.  I had tasks I didn’t know how to do, surrounded by people I didn’t quite know, and had a major knowledge gap in certain areas (technology 😉).  It’s jarring to go from being competent to being incompetent overnight.  Have you ever felt this way? 

No one likes feeling incompetent, and the temptation is to try to hide that from the world.  I’ve found the best thing to do is to embrace humility and be willing to own the fact that I’m new and don’t exactly know what I’m doing.  I had conversations that went like this, “Hey boss, I’ve never done this task before and have no idea what the expectations are and what I’m supposed to do.  I’m D1 (situational leadership).  If you don’t explicitly tell me to do something I won’t know what to do.  Can you spell this out for me?”  I’d also have situations, especially when talking with the Tech@Lilly team where I’d say, “I need to stop you for a moment.  I need to summarize to make sure I’m following.  I think you’re saying X.  Is that right?”  Sometimes I was correct, and sometimes I was off in another galaxy. 

What does this have to do with anything?  While it may have felt awkward and a little intimidating to be vulnerable about my incompetence, embracing humility and having these conversations ensured I was learning what I needed to learn in order to perform at my best.  Additionally, I think my colleagues appreciated the vulnerability and clarity, so they knew how to help me.  Think about the people you work with.  Would you want them to be open about where they need help or would you rather them try to bluff their way through it?  I’m assuming you’d want them to be honest, which should give us all encouragement to be open about where we are with a given task.  Finally, if I want to be a good leader, then being open about what I don’t know and where I’m less skilled sets the stage that it’s okay to be open and vulnerable, which are two traits of a great culture.   

The challenge: Will you be brave enough to embrace humility?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Being Brave and Humble Enough to Ask for Help (9-15-21)

Last week I shared a lesson I learned from Professor Skinner about curiosity, and this week I want to share another lesson Professor Skinner taught me about being humble and asking for help.

It’s another day in Professor Skinner’s class and this time she tells us that she has a problem we need to solve as a team.  She hands us a collection of pieces that we are supposed to put together to form another shape.  It’s like the picture.  You have triangles, squares, rectangles, etc. and it’s supposed to make something bigger.  The deal is that as soon as you solve the problem you are free to go.  She hands out the pieces and the teams begin to feverishly work to figure this out.  Minutes go by and no one has figured it out.  After 20 minutes or so, Professor Skinner says something like, “You can ask for help, but you’ll lose some points.”  Everyone is stubborn, refuses her offer, and continues working on their own. 

Finally, my group and a couple of the other groups ask for help.  When they do Professor Skinner gives them an additional piece she had been withholding.  That’s right.  The entire time we had been working she had been withholding a piece of the puzzle.  #theultimateSkinnerflex  The lesson of the day was that you need to be humble enough to ask for help.  Those points we “lost” didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, because asking for help enabled us to finish.  Those points symbolized whether or not we could swallow our pride and be brave enough to ask for help.

Think about work for a moment.  How often are you afraid to ask for help because you are afraid you’ll be penalized in some way?  In the grand scheme of things would it be better to “lose” a couple of points and perform or do it all on your own and not achieve success?

The challenge: Be humble and brave enough to ask for help.

Bonus 1: This month marks 9 years of blogs.  Thanks to all of you for reading and sharing.  It means a lot to me.

Bonus 2: I feel I’ve turned asking for help into a superpower.  One of my mantras is that someone smarter than me has already attacked this problem, so I should learn from them first.  I can’t tell you how much asking for help early and often has helped me accelerate in my learning and performance.  #thehumblehustle

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry