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Neohumility / Humility and Business Leadership: Do they belong together?
Pareena G. Lawrence*
Associate Professor, Economics and Management
University of Minnesota, Morris
205 Camden Hall
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267
[email protected]
* The author would like to thank Maria Brun for her research assistance and the Morris
Academic Partnership program that helped fund this research.
Neohumility and Business Leadership: Do they belong together?
Abstract
This article looks at commonly accepted and newly emerging ideas of effective leadership in the
literature. One such quality that has recently emerged in the discourse on leadership is
“humility.” Humility has traditionally been associated with weakness and even seen as
antithetical to the leader persona. This article suggests a new view of humility, “neohumility,”
humility without weakness and transformed to fit the business world. It operationalizes the
definition of neohumility and includes characteristics such as self-awareness, valuing others’
opinions, willing to learn and change, sharing power, having the ability to hear the truth and
admit mistakes, and working to create a culture of openness where dissent is encouraged in an
environment of mutual trust and respect.
Neohumility and Business Leadership: Do they belong together?
INTRODUCTION
On the first day of a seminar on leadership, give your students an in-class assignment.
Ask them to write about the characteristics that they think are important in an effective leader in
American society today. Smart, strong willed, determined, competent, visionary, perhaps even
bold are descriptors both our students and society ...