Is Humility a Sign of Weakness or a Strength in Leaders? PV Ramana Murthy on 'The Power of Humility'.
Is there a relation between humility and high achievement? Are leaders born with humility or is it an acquired trait? Can humble leaders inspire employees to perform better? Is humility a sign of weakness or a strength in leaders? PV. Ramana Murthy's recently launched book, The Power of Humility, published by Harpercollinsindia, addresses all of these questions and more, offering a fresh perspective on how humble achievers are rewriting the rules of leadership. PV is a Mumbai based advisor and consultant to CEOs, boards and corporates
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 5:00
This is where I thought about humility from the perspective of leadership through my lenses, the corporate lenses. Through my experience of close to four decades after observing several leaders I have been very fortunate to deal with several of those leaders who have looked at leadership from a different perspective. When I observe them closely, I realized that humility plays a dominant role when it comes to leadership
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 5:00
He stumbled upon it and as admitted by him and talked about by him in one of the Harvard Business Review articles, he left it open. He said that we stumbled upon this humility in leadership and there is a scope for further research on this subject, is what he said. So this is where I thought that I need to further dwell deeper into this subject and come up with a framework. So this is where the book talks about two frameworks, apple and Image
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 3:29
They would get that kind of a perspective as to what is humility in leadership and how we could behave with other people and get the best out of ourselves and also the other persons. It's like I said earlier, when humility determines the core of a leader, the outcome would be creating a high achieving culture. And culture is everything, whether it is within the family or in a society or in the corporate world
Very, very interesting. Mr. Murthy, thank you so much for sharing that. Humility may or may not come naturally to a person. So knowing what humility in leadership looks like and what it doesn't look like can be the first step towards becoming a humble leader. How can one go about actively infusing humility into one's leadership?
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 4:32
You. Thank you for asking such a beautiful question. Ramya this is a very important one. As leaders, how humble we are, to what extent we could really call ourselves humble is a million dollar question and it's related to our self awareness. Many of the leaders, or rather many of us, are not really aware as to how we think and how we behave in various settings with people, those who are at the family, within the society and within the corporate world
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 3:16
Let me take a step back and talk about what you said about being more visible on social media platforms. In my view, fundamentally there is nothing wrong in being more visible on social media platforms. That's the need of the R. One needs to be on the social media platforms to convey a particular message. But the most important thing the leaders need to be aware as to what is being conveyed. What's the intention or purpose of conveying a particular message on social media platforms is it to promote ourselves
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 4:00
You. Thank you very much for that question, Ramya. I would agree to that viewpoint to a large extent. The negative dynamics at the top team level would impact the organizational culture to a large extent. I have seen this happening again and again and again in my corporate career. It in fact my whole focus, or rather one of the most important focus areas was to create a kind of healthy environment at the top team level so that the organizational culture would be much healthier
P. V. Ramana Murthy
@pvmurthy · 2:23
That's where I have researched on that subject reached out to leaders who fundamentally exhibit humility in leadership and then conveyed the message that when there is humility in leadership at the top or at various levels in the organization, what would happen is that there would be an organizational culture which consists of high people engagement, high exploration or innovation and high performance business performance. This is what I tried communicating in the book. So I would request all our Swell community members to read the book and give their comments