Humble confidence will strengthen your leadership position. Not many people follow a meek leader, but with humble confidence, you’re not meek.
Leaders and managers are two different things. Managers manage things and tasks. They tell people what to do. They operate by authority and control.
Leaders inspire. They cast and articulate a vision and they motivate others to pursue it. They bring people together to accomplish something that’s greater than any single person…even greater than the sum of all the parts.
For a leader, one plus one is three. For a manager, one plus one is still two.
Without confidence, most people will never follow.
How many people do you know who will follow a meek warrior into battle? “I’m not real sure whether we should flank around to the back or charge from the front or both. But I figure we’ll just give one of those the old college try. The worst we could do is get killed.”
Nobody’s following that guy into battle.
The leader sets a plan and has confidence that it is the right plan and in the team’s ability to execute it. That’s not to say that the leader won’t adjust the plan, but the leader’s confidence is contagious and it inspires others. It inspires them to the point that they’re willing to follow regardless of the trials that lay ahead.
This confidence typically contains an element of passion. Think about the great leaders in or sports or the great warriors and generals. Passion.
The entrepreneur, the athlete, the general, the great leader is known for bull-headed stubbornness. It’s not the stubbornness that is so critical. It’s the ability to ignore the naysayer and be passionate and confident in the plan.
The passionate leader has such a clear vision of where he or she is going that nothing will get in the way. That leader knows that the team will face challenges along the way, but because the vision is greater than any single person, everybody is willing to pursue it for its own sake.
Humble confidence strengthens your leadership position. It inspires others to follow.
Why do all leaders need humble confidence? Here are my four reasons.