Humility as Catalyst for Developing Ethical Leaders: Insights from Comedy and Self-Development
I have been writing up my research findings on the former CIA officers’ sensemaking of ethical leadership experiences, while concurrently developing a leader development program using stand-up comedy. A few weeks ago, my dissertation advisor posed a question: “So, what is the link between your dissertation and your comedy work?”
At the time, I didn’t have an answer. However, as I concluded the self-development section of my dissertation, the connection between learning comedy and becoming a more ethical and human-centered leader struck me — it was humility.
A level of humility was required to take an honest look at oneself and receive personal feedback from others in both the context of ethical leader development and the context of learning standup comedy. Stand-up comedy involves analyzing oneself and developing a script to share with an audience.
Success in the comedy field hinges on stand-up comedians possessing self-insight and being able to discern how the audience perceives them (Chin et al., 2022). Similarly, high-functioning leaders need to introspect, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and maintain self-assessment within an acceptable range of how they are perceived by others (Caldwell et al., 2017). Both learning comedy and leadership require an honest inward look and engaging honestly with others.
Among the ten former CIA officers who participated in my qualitative study on ethical leadership, humility emerged as a crucial factor in the initial willingness and ability to prioritize self-development. Additionally, humility played a pivotal role in advanced self-regulation, involving the acceptance of one’s fallibility and the readiness to seek support from others for emotional regulation.
Participants emphasized that their dedication to self-development was facilitated by a certain attention to humility, innate to some, and acquired by others via learning from humble leaders or challenges. Studies show that humble leaders contribute to empowering, engaging, ethical, and innovative environments (Chandler et al., 2023). Participants’ narratives in the study stressed how humility played a pivotal role in their self-development journey, aiding in self-regulation and internalizing a norm of human dignity.
Recognizing the vital role of humility for both individual employees and the organization, the findings in my study suggest the need to explore ways to support leaders in embracing feedback with humility, rather than dismissing it, and understanding the factors that encourage humility among leaders and future leaders in their choice to pursue self-development.
Leader humility has been characterized as either expressed and perceived during interpersonal interactions or as something that is a long-term stable leadership trait (Chandler et al., 2023). Humility appeared to be impactful for participants, whether leaders expressed it when needed, or it was enacted as a leader’s permanent way of being. Participant interviews indicated that humility was something that can grow within a leader and practiced in moments, with the hope that if it is not already, humility becomes an internalized baseline trait to which leaders can return.
Creating a leader development course based on learning the art of stand-up comedy in a group setting resulted in an emphasis on participants being humble enough to share their personal experiences. In the workshop, the back-and-forth personal reflection and group sharing with a humorous angle encourages participants to share and listen to others’ experiences in the world. As the course progresses, participants are welcome to share as little or as much as they want. They discuss what they find funny and why and also create a mind map centered on themselves, branching out to their interactions, locations, stories, and perceptions.
Participants then look for the absurd that might be unveiled by looking across their contexts and ask others to find it as well. One participant shared, in essence, “I don’t normally like being vulnerable, but this course pulled it out of me without me knowing I was increasing my vulnerability.” The course seems to provide an opportunity for leaders to engage with humility in a nonthreatening environment and may serve as a good opener to any leader development programs, such as the 360-degree feedback, which requires a certain level of humility for a leader to hear and integrate feedback about how they are perceived by their subordinates, leaders, and peers.
Not only has participant feedback been promising, but the success of comedy-related developmental programs was found in an intervention program among medical personnel (Chin et al., 2022). While there are plenty of cautions when it comes to humor in the workplace and humor among leaders, the workshop encourages participants to look at themselves, manage tensions in vulnerability, and lean on others to get feedback on how their joke or angle “hits” with others.
Research on leadership training and development has not directly recognized the role of humility in being able to engage in self-development (Seidle et al., 2016; Eich, 2008) although it does state the importance of engaging with others’ perspectives (Eurich, 2018). Nor does social cognitive theory recognize humility as a central concept, although it describes aspects of humility in explaining the importance of self-regulation, self-reflection, and the capacity for individuals to learn from their own experiences and observations (Bandura, 2023).
Leader humility is a characteristic that enables a willingness to accurately view oneself, an ability to appreciate the strengths of others, and an openness to learning new ideas and integrating feedback (Chandler et al., 2023). In the study, being humble enough to engage in self-development led to participants learning more about self and other awareness, opportunities for increased humility and emotional awareness, and ultimately self-regulation. The standup comedy for leader development workshop poses as a unique way to engage leaders in humility and getting comfortable with their self-development journey.
References
Bandura, A. (2023). Social Cognitive Theory; An Agentic Perspective on Human Nature. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Caldwell, C., Ichiho, R., & Anderson, V. (2017). Understanding level 5 leaders: The ethical perspectives of leadership humility. Journal of Management Development, 36(5), 724–732. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-09-2016-0184
Chandler, J. A., Johnson, N. E., Jordan, S. L., B, D. K., & Short, J. C. (2023). A meta-analysis of humble leadership: Reviewing individual, team, and organizational outcomes of leader humility. The Leadership Quarterly, 34(1), 101660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2022.101660
Chin, M. H., Aburmishan, M. M., & Zhu, M. (2022). Standup comedy principles and the personal monologue to explore interpersonal bias: Experiential learning in a health disparities course. BMC Medical Education, 22(1), 80. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03139-7
Eich, D. (2008). A Grounded Theory of High-Quality Leadership Programs: Perspectives From Student Leadership Development Programs in Higher Education. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 15(2), 176–187. https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051808324099
Eurich, T. (2018). What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It).
Seidle, B., Fernandez, S., & Perry, J. L. (2016). Do Leadership Training and Development Make a Difference in the Public Sector? A Panel Study. Public Administration Review, 76(4), 603–613. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12531