Intellectual humility is recognizing and accepting that there are gaps in one’s knowledge and that one’s current beliefs may be incorrect.
I’m currently writing this from Milan, Italy as I make my way to Lake Como to meet up with my fellow members of 4PC, a community of world-class coaches who meet in-person twice a year to work on our personal and professional growth.
While in Milan, I was able to give myself a nice serving of “intellectual humble pie” (when I wasn’t having servings of tagliatelle bolognese that is!).
Having lived in Paris for a year in college and having had the privilege to travel throughout western Europe, I am no stranger to the awe-inspiring gothic cathedrals that dot the continent.
So, of course I had to check out the Duomo di Milano cathedral on this quick Milan stopover. Walking up the steps from the metro, I immediately see the beautiful front of the church.
The front of the church is exactly how it looks in pictures. I walked around the perimeter of the church and it looked exactly as I’d imagined…
Until I was stopped in my tracks!
The back of the cathedral currently has a jumbotron electronic billboard on it!
My immediate reaction was that it was wrong and sacrilegious to have a huge LED screen playing advertisements on this stunning piece of religious gothic architecture.
And, while I still believe that flashy LED billboards are more fitting in Times Square than on the walls of a 700-year old church, I try to reflect every time I have a strong emotional reaction to something to see how it could be a leadership learning opportunity.
What I realized is that if I were intellectually humble about this example, my perspective can be true AND other perspectives can be true, too.
In leadership, it is vital to be able to make the distinction between:
What is true for me vs. what is the truth?
What this means is that while I can honor how I feel, I can also display objective curiosity to learn what really happened here.
I will likely never know the “truth” as to the exact process that landed that e-billboard on the back of the duomo, but it does expand my brain to ponder:
I wonder who got to make this decision?
What if the billboard was meant to attract a younger audience back to church?
What if the billboard was meant to be temporary to research positive economic outcomes on the church and surrounding areas?
What if the jumbo screen displays live church services and only shows ads during certain hours?
It is true for me that I do not like seeing the billboard on the duomo and I accept that I don’t know the before, after, and during story of it either.
I have had thousands of powerful coaching conversations in the last decade. Each conversation usually entails some emotional truth that the client is feeling. When those emotions are honored AND when differing objective truths are explored, so many insights occur.
Sometimes you may never get to know the objective truth, like in my duomo jumbotron story. Yet, coaching yourself through it like I did can be helpful.
Other times, you do have the opportunity to be curious and to explore other people’s truths.
As a leader or coach, how effective are you at being able to distinguish what is true for you from what is the objective truth?
How effective are you at being curiously non-judgmental to learn differing viewpoints, particularly when you have a strong emotional reaction?
Are you creating a culture where everybody can honor what is true for them while being able to explore what is the truth?
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