Humility
Part III: Transformation and Growth
15 Ways to Grow in Humility
Embracing humility can revolutionize your approach to design and collaboration. Let's explore how the practice of humility manifests in various aspects of your professional life:
1. Be Yourself
Humility frees you to be authentic. It allows you to embrace and express your true self without the pretense of trying to meet external expectations or the fear of judgment. This authenticity fosters genuine connections with others and aligns you with your own values and beliefs.
Pride, on the other hand, is pretentious. It compels us to act in ways that serve only to maintain the illusion of who we want others to think we are.
2. Have an Opinion
Contrary to common misconception, humility doesn't mean lacking convictions or viewpoints. Instead, it empowers you to hold and share your opinions with confidence, acknowledging that while your views are valuable, they are not infallible and are open to refinement.
Pride is a coward, making us afraid to speak for fear of being judged, paradoxically silencing our voices when they need to be heard.
3. Ask More Questions
A humble approach nurtures natural curiosity and a recognition that there is always more to learn. It encourages us to seek understanding and clarity, not just for the sake of knowledge but for the enrichment of conversation and connection.
Pride is a know-it-all, insisting that our ego be the subtext of every conversation—which is just obnoxious and socially inept.
4. Test Your Assumptions
Humility involves questioning our assumptions and biases, recognizing that they can cloud judgment and hinder growth. This willingness to challenge what we believe to be true paves the way for deeper insights and learning.
Pride is over-confident, making us reject people and ideas that do not reinforce our biases, limiting our growth and understanding.
5. Evolve Your Point of View
With humility, we can remain adaptable in our thinking, allowing our perspectives to be shaped and reshaped by new information, experiences, and the viewpoints of others. It signifies strength in flexibility rather than rigidity.
Pride is stuck in the past, keeping us from evolving, trapping us in outdated thinking and approaches.
6. Experiment with New Ideas
Humility creates a safe space for experimentation and the exploration of new concepts, free from the fear of failure. It understands that innovation often requires venturing into the unknown, where learning is the true success.
Pride is woefully insecure, making us avoid uncertainty, stifling innovation and growth.
7. Appreciate Other Perspectives
Humility teaches us to value and actively seek out diverse viewpoints. It acknowledges the richness that different experiences and backgrounds bring to a conversation, project, or problem-solving process.
Pride is a bigot—straight up—making us petty, judgmental, and close-minded, blocking the wealth of insights that diverse perspectives can offer.
8. Collaborate More Constructively
A humble mindset enhances teamwork, promoting a culture where contributions are valued equally, and success is shared. It fosters an environment of mutual respect, open communication, and collective achievement.
Pride is a hermit, tricking us into believing we're better off working alone, depriving us of the synergy that comes from effective collaboration.
9. Put Others Ahead of Yourself
Humility involves prioritizing the needs, growth, and success of others, often ahead of our own immediate interests. It's a commitment to lifting others up, recognizing that true leadership and fulfillment come from empowering those around us.
Pride is selfish, causing us to conflate service with servitude, missing the profound satisfaction and growth that comes from helping others succeed.
10. Acquire Deeper Knowledge
Humility is the foundation of a lifelong pursuit of learning. It drives the quest for deeper understanding, recognizing that knowledge is limitless and that every experience offers something to learn.
Pride is lazy, making us more concerned with asserting knowledge than cultivating it, stunting our intellectual and professional growth.
11. Learn from Your Mistakes
A humble approach to mistakes sees them not as failures but as opportunities for growth. It involves acknowledging errors openly, learning from them, and moving forward with newfound wisdom.
Pride is deceitful, making us deny or conceal our mistakes, robbing us of valuable learning opportunities.
12. Unleash Your Creativity
Humility encourages us to express our creativity without inhibition. It frees us from the fear of judgment, allowing our imagination and innovative capabilities to flourish unconstrained.
Pride is uptight, magnifying our inhibitions, stifling our creativity, and limiting our potential for imagination, resourcefulness, and original thinking.
13. Evolve Your Skill Set
Humility motivates us to continuously develop our abilities, recognizing that mastery is a perpetual journey. It fosters a mindset of growth, where developing new skills and refining existing ones is a constant endeavor.
Pride is content with mediocrity, wasting energy rationalizing complacency or concealing the evidence of our growth, hindering our professional development.
14. Exhibit Courage
Humility and courage are deeply intertwined; it takes bravery to be humble. This courage manifests in being vulnerable, in admitting we don't have all the answers, and in taking risks that lead to growth and understanding.
Pride is afraid of its own shadow, making us retreat from circumstances that test our courage, limiting our potential for growth and achievement.
15. Build Trust
Humility builds trust by demonstrating that we are genuine, reliable, and open. Trust grows in the presence of humility, where actions are guided by integrity, respect for others, and a commitment to truth and transparency.
Pride is a jerk—plain and simple—driving suspicion and ulterior motives that disrupt our ability to trust or be trusted, damaging professional relationships and team dynamics.
The Return on Investment in Humility
What you get in return for embracing humility is not just control over pride, but a relaxing sense of self-assurance as well. With nothing to hide, humility frees you to be yourself, have opinions, ask questions, test assumptions, evolve your viewpoints, experiment with new ideas, appreciate diverse perspectives, collaborate effectively, prioritize others' growth, acquire deeper knowledge, learn from mistakes, unleash creativity, evolve your skills, exhibit courage, and build trust.
To learn, adapt, and grow wiser from experience, humility is both the means and the end. First and foremost, it's a choice. Calm and in control—acting out of humility rather than reacting out of pride—you can derive strength from circumstances that might otherwise seem threatening by choosing to be humble.
In a field that often celebrates individual genius and groundbreaking innovation, humility might seem counterintuitive. Yet, it's precisely this quality that can set truly exceptional designers apart.
Humility allows us to:
- Remain open to new ideas and perspectives.
- Adapt quickly to changing technologies and user needs.
- Collaborate effectively across disciplines.
- Learn continuously, staying at the forefront of our field.
By cultivating humility, we not only grow as individuals but also contribute to a more innovative, collaborative, and human-centered design industry. In embracing humility, we unlock our full potential as designers and as lifelong learners.
In a world that often celebrates the loud and the assertive, humility is a quiet but powerful way to cultivate a more knowledgeable, authentic, and charismatic version of yourself. Having the courage to lower your guard, the graciousness to lift others up, and the wisdom to grow are signs of great strength. Confusing any of this with weakness is just buying the lie your pride is selling you.
About the author
Brian Williams is a design strategist with decades of experience in design leadership and operations. Brian created Rockturn to help designers cultivate curiosity, creativity, and confidence by broadening their product design knowledge. When he’s not busy with Rockturn, he can be found disc golfing or riffing (poorly) at the piano for hours.