Humble Leadership

Dalam buku yang relatif baru, dicetak pertama tahun 2018 dan second edition tahun 2023, Edgar H. Schein dan Peter A. Schein, menuliskan tema dengan judul  yang sangat menarik: Humble Leadership. The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust, diuraikan tentang konsep ini sebagaimana saya kutip berikut ini:

Humble’s leadership emphasis on finding new and better solutions and processes opens the door to forward thinking, allowing for fast adaptation and innovations. Resetting norms around the benefits of sharing insights, speculations, other perspectives, even wild ideas, to stimulate new and better thinking will help small groups, large teams, and entire companies increase their growth. Humble leadership can help team see, feel, and conceptualize opportunities that are outside of the defined metrics, moving us beyond known knowns and toward unknown unknowns  .One rule of thumb is to consider allocating  20 to 25 percent of work effort away from managing metrics and toward collaborative information sharing focused on  co-creating  “new and better” using information shared across levels in an organization. Humble leadership is foundational  to getting the most  out of  20 to 25 percent of innovation oriented work effort. Humble leadership is also about “open system” thinking.   

Humility in Practice: Situational Humility.

A very specific sense of the word humility is at the core of Humble Leadership. Situational humility is a developed skill characterized by the openness to see and understand all the elements of a situation by:

1. accepting uncertainty, while remaining curious to find out what is really going on.
2. being open, intentionally and mindfully to what others may know or observe, and
3. recognizing when unconscious biases can distort perceptions and trigger emotional responses.

The situational humility principle applies no matter  where you are in a hierarchy or what your job description defines as your area of responsibility. You may find yourself in the situation of seeing a problem with more clarity than those with more formal authority.

Humble Leadership in U Theory

Menarik mencermati pernyataan dan temuan kedua penulis tersebut tentang “humble leadership”. Edgar H.S. & P.A. Schein (2023) menyatakan bahwa kerendahan hati seorang pemimpin akan mampu memberikan solusi  baru yang lebih baik:  leadership is the creation and implementation of something new and better. Model ini ada mendorong 20-25% upaya kerja yang berorientasi pada kelahiraninovasi. Namun akan sangat menarik apabila kita coba sandingkan antara prinsip yang dikembangkan dalam Humble Leadership (2023) dengan Theory U oleh C Otto Scharmer berikut ini (2007):

Theory U menguraikan lebih dahulu apa yang disebut sebagai humbel leadership (HL), walaupun Theory U tidak pernah menyebutkan tentang  HL tersebut. Namun Theory U lebih detail  menjelaskan tentang esensi dari hal-hal yang diuraikan dalam konsep humble leadership tersebut. Menjelaskan tentang hambatan dalam proses untuk menemukan “new self”, yaitu inovasi yang masih berada di masa depan dan dapat ditemukenali melalui proses Crystalizing à Prototyping à Performing. Singkatnya seorang leader harus mampu menghubungkan antara Head àHeart à Hand dari potensi (inovasi) di masa depan yang kemudian diracik (protyping) menjadi solusi baru dan lebih baik dari persoalan-persoalan yang dihadapi manusia saat ini.

Selamat datang dalam diskusi yang menarik tentang leadership, agile governance. Pokok bahasan yang tidak pernah akan habis-habisnya dibahas, terutama leadership dalam pengelolaan sumber daya alam di Indonesia saat ini dan 50-100 tahun ke depan. Isu tentang sustainability, perubahan iklim, science & technology, continuous innovation, peran Artificial Intelligence, ilmu-ilmu sosial dan humaniora.***

Literatur

Edgar H.S. & P.A. Schein., 2023. Humble Leadership. The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust. Second Edition, Reimagined and Refined. Berret -Koehler, Inc.1333Broadway, Suite 1000, Oakland, CA 94612-1924.

Scharmer, C. Otto., 2007. Theory U. Leading from the Future as it Emerges. The Social Technology of Presencing. The Society for Organizational Learning, Inc.45 First  Street, Suite.414, Cambridge, MA, 02141 USA.