Editor’s note: Ed Hess, professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden Graduate School of Business, and Katherine Ludwig are the authors Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age.
The smart machine age is upon us, and it’s disrupting everything. Not only could it drive massive unemployment – researchers from Oxford University predict that 47 percent of all jobs in the United States may be taken over by technology in the next five to 15 years – it’s redefining smart and successful. The day of the aggressive know-it-all who steamrolls over colleagues is drawing to a close. Success will belong to those who can quiet their ego, collaborate and empathize with others.
The upcoming technology tsunami will radically change the concept of work in our society. After the machines take over, any remaining jobs still available for humans will be those requiring critical, innovative and creative thinking as well as high emotional engagement with customers, patients or clients.
These criteria are different from our culture’s current markers of success. In the automated age, humility will be the golden ticket to getting a job.
There’s a lot of misconception around humility. Too many people in our society think humility is meekness or submissiveness, or thinking less of oneself. In fact, humility is something entirely different.
We use humility as it is defined by psychology. Humility means having an accurate view of one’s abilities and achievements; being able to acknowledge one’s mistakes, imperfections, gaps in knowledge and limitations; being open to new ideas, contradictory information and advice; keeping one’s abilities and accomplishments in perspective; having a low focus on self or a tendency to forget the self; and appreciating the value of all things and the many ways other people and things contribute to the world.
Living by the real definition of humility – a vital component of what we call “NewSmart” – liberates us from our inward focus and opens up our views and the reality of the world. It also opens our hearts to others in a way that enables the empathy, compassion and trust necessary for effective teamwork and collaboration. By contrast, the old path to success inhibits the high-quality thinking, creating, innovating and problem solving required to excel in the smart machine age.
Here are a few of insights from our new book Humility Is the New Smart:
To master the ego, you must first overcome inhibiting cultural mindsets. Culturally, we seem to value highly competitive individuals who appear to be strong, self-confident, extroverted and all knowing, and who are good at self-promotion and seem to feel more special and better than others. In the smart machine age, a very different approach will be needed for success in the workplace. The chart below shows the stark contrast:
Old Cultural Ways New Cultural Ways
Individuals win Teams win
Listening to confirm Listening to learn
Telling Asking questions
Knowing Being good at not knowing
IQ IQ and EQ
Mistakes are always bad Mistakes are learning opportunities
Compete Collaborate
Self-promote Self-reflect
Big ME Big WE
Embracing humility may not be easy. It may be difficult for some successful people to learn humility because they believe it runs counter to their being perceived as strong. They were raised, educated and trained in an era where higher-order thinking and emotional skills were not deemed essential for the majority of workers. In fact, most of today’s adults have no formal training in how to think, how to listen, how to learn through inquiry, how to emotionally engage, how to collaborate or how to embrace mistakes as learning opportunities.
You may be thinking, I am a good listener, I already relate well to others, I’m not self-centered. It’s true, you may be good enough but good enough won’t cut it anymore. Now you have to be better – which means toning down your ego’s power over your life.
Human beings have a tendency to emotionally react and seek confirmation. The problem most of us have in quieting our egos comes from our naturally reflective ways of thinking and emotionally reacting. Cognitive science clearly shows that we are all reflexive, cognitive thinkers. We seek to confirm what we believe, we crave affirmation and we naturally become emotionally defensive when someone disagrees with us.
Those are profound impediments to excellent thinking, creativity, innovation and high emotional engagement with others. It takes daily effort to overcome these responses.
Meditation and gratitude are surprisingly powerful tools for quieting the ego. Recent neuroscience and psychological research strongly suggests two ways in which we can effectively practice quieting our egos and focusing on others. The first is through rigorous mindfulness meditation. The second is through daily gratitude exercises – for example, thinking about people who have played a positive role in your life.
I can attest that meditation and the practice of gratitude have quieted my ego, enabling me to be more open-minded and less emotionally defensive. It’s also helped me listen better to others by not rushing to judge or disagree but taking the time to understand and reflect on what people are saying. Before engaging with others at work meetings, I remind myself that “this is not all about me” and “I am not my ideas.” If I feel myself physically getting emotionally defensive or angry, I pause and take three or four deep breaths and focus on exhaling for three to four seconds.
It may seem counterintuitive but without a quiet ego we are suboptimal thinkers and collaborators. And mastering your ego is lifelong work. It’s a daily task to avoid regressing to your hardwired proclivity to “look out for me.” Those able to rise above that tendency and develop the traits associated with humility will have the advantage as technology continues to change the career landscape of tomorrow.