Matt Rhea talked about how important it is to start by building a good relationship and working to establish trust. This allows for people to open themselves up and be vulnerable, providing a space where they can admit when they have weaknesses. This level of humility is necessary to grow and get better. No one likes to admit that they have a weakness, but we all have them. When we know that we can truly trust the people around us and that they won’t let us fall, this will help us refine our weakness. Just like this belayer, it will anchor us in our time of need and we will be able to make the incremental growth that we need to become even stronger. When we are willing to expose ourselves, that is when real growth occurs and so we will begin to climb our individual mountains, but we need to trust the people around us. These types of relationships allow us to catch problems before they become debilitating, stopping us from making too many mistakes before we lose confidence in our own abilities and begin to doubt ourselves. As we work in this cycle of trust, our relationships and our organizations become even stronger as we work to climb even higher peaks by becoming even more capable than we ever thought possible. If we see people being guarded or sensitive that is evidence that we have not built the level of trust needed yet and need to work harder. Listen to more from Matt on Apple @ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/that-all-might-be-edified-discussions-on-servant-leadership/id1598799300?i=1000597616964 or on the Pocket Cast player at the end of this post.
I also included a video of one of my heroes below, Nelson Mandela, to get us to think about the power of humility and if we are willing to become the people we want to be. Sometimes we have to be willing to trust even when the people in our lives have given us no reason to trust so that we can work to change the environment around us. In some cases, we have to be the catalyst of change to start to mold these relationships of trust so others will follow and join the climb with us. We can take great courage from the example of the great leadership of Nelson Mandela.
Listen to this great segment of Nelson Mandela on the power of humility on the Oprah Winfrey Show below: