Pride versus humility and their impact on leadership effectiveness

Let's consider leadership effectiveness and a character trait called pride or ego. Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements, but the heart, or core, of this leadership weakener is still missing.

The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward other people. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.”1

Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against others.

Pride, unchecked, allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled. This can lead to "Do as I say, not as I do." hypocrisy in leaders.

Pride wants us to elevate ourselves above others and diminish them.

IF leadership is influence of others, THEN pride, or ego, can severely reduce leadership effectiveness.

The proud make every person their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents, or any other measuring device against others. In the words of C. S. Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”

The proud often stand in fear of other people’s judgment. “What will people think of me?” weighs heavily. Fear of other’s judgment manifests itself in competition for other’s approval. Our motives for the things we do are where the problem is manifest. This concept is excellently portrayed in a book called Leadership and Self Deception. I strongly recommend this book, especially to newer leaders or to people exposed to ego-centered leaders in their development.

Some prideful people are not so concerned as to whether their wages meet their needs as they are that their wages are more than someone else’s. Their reward is being a cut above the rest. This is the enmity of pride.

When pride has a hold on us, we counter-intuitively lose our independence of thinking. Pride can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted in ourselves. The Johari window seems to apply here. Some of us consider pride to be a problem of those on the top, looking down at the rest of us.

There is, however, a far more common ailment in many organizations—and that is pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in many ways, such as fault finding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude that might lift another, blaming and being jealous. These behaviors can bring consequences onto organizations just as onto individuals. Leaders need to work to remove these behaviors from their organizational culture. One-on-one discussions are needed, and for some regularly.

Lack of alignment or outright noncompliance with leader initiatives, defiance, disregard, insubordination, intractableness, and recalcitrance all describe essentially a prideful power struggle against someone in authority over us. A proud person hates the fact that someone is above him. He thinks this lowers his position. This highlights scarcity thinking patterns instead of abundance thinking patterns.

Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride and ego. "What's in it for me?" and “How everything affects me” is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity, self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking. Selfishness has been described well as self-destruction in slow motion. Addiction is a sad example of this self-focus taken to extreme. The news is regularly filled with the consequences of pride with stories of its impact on individuals and organizations. There is little room for it when effective leadership is desired.

To continue, another face of pride is conflict and contention. Arguments, fights, coercive leadership, generation gaps, abuse, and disturbances all fall into this category of pride. Conflict management is typically considered a leadership competency.

Contention in our organizations/families/teams drives many of our organizational members away. Such turnover is expensive to companies and devastating in families. Contention ranges from a hostile spoken word to larger conflicts.

The proud are easily offended and hold grudges. They withhold pardon to keep another in their debt and to justify their injured feelings.

The proud do not receive counsel or correction easily. Defensiveness is used by them to justify and rationalize their frailties and failures.

The proud depend upon the external environment around them to tell them whether they have value or not. Their self-esteem is determined by where they are judged to be on the ladders of organizational success. They feel worthwhile as individuals if the numbers beneath them in achievement, talent, appearence, or intellect are large enough. Pride is ugly. It says, “If you succeed, I am a failure.” It embodies scarcity thinking.

Pride limits or stops growth individually and organizationally. This is a key leadership principle. Look for it and its impact around you to verify this truth.

The proud are not easily taught. They won’t change their minds to accept truths, because to do so implies they have been wrong.

Pride adversely affects all our relationships—between spouses, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student, and all people. Our degree of pride determines how we treat other people. How we treat people shows others our degree of pride, especially children.

Think of what pride has cost us in the past and what it is now costing us in our own lives, in children's lives, and the organizations of which we’re a part.

Pride affects all of us at various times and in various degrees.

Pride is a universal problem with humans. The antidote for pride is humility.

• We can choose to be humble by conquering enmity toward other people.
• We can choose to be humble by receiving counsel and chastisement from mentors, leaders, peers, and followers.
• We can choose to be humble by concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and ceasing to demand punishment or restitution from those who have offended us.

Humble leadership is more effective leadership. Proud leadership is less effective. Judge this principle for yourself. Compare and contrast all the examples of both you’ve come across in your life. Which type has a stronger positive influence on children, youth, teens, new graduates, mature adults, and on profit and loss statements? Which type has a stronger positive influence on organizations of which you’ve been apart? 

If we know these things, why is it so difficult to consistently do them? Because we’re human. The striving for effective leadership is constant, on-going, and never ending because we often slide back into less effective behaviors. 


This article intentionally pushes the extremes to make the point. Pride and ego hurt leadership. Humility helps leadership. Which will you apply today? Which will you model for children around you today?

Note: This article is based almost entirely on a talk given by Ezra Taft Benson in May 1989. I revised it for the purposes of this site, but the ideas are his, not mine. I have simply noticed how true the principles are in many situations in life since then. I noticed enough to make me want to share the ideas here.

1. Pride, Ezra Taft Benson in May 1989