It’s a well-known fact that values shape company’s culture and define the operating philosophies that guide an internal conduct as well as the relationship with company’s customers, partners, and shareholders. As a rule, core values are summarized in the mission statement or in the company's statement of core values. They should affect every aspect of a business, from employee benefit packages and workplace culture to marketing strategies and customers service.
In Datumize, we believe that the company values are much more than just stated values - they are practiced values. Among numerous corporate values, humility is of the exceptional importance.
Humility vs False Pride
Some view humility negatively, suggesting it signifies submissiveness, lowliness, or being overly modest. It’s worth mentioning that humility doesn’t mean the absence of pride, that is, it’s totally fine for the employees to feel pride over a job well done. However, false pride is the alarming feature. Just imagine a co-worker saying, “If the customer doesn’t like it, tell them to go somewhere else.” This statement transmits rather arrogant attitude and even contains some element of superiority and contempt. In contrast, when employees are open to receiving feedback and willing to learn from others, they likely possess more humility than false pride.
As the substantial research shows, without certain display of humility, team members often feel underappreciated and undervalued. Even more, “humility predicts effective leadership. Humility is associated with minimizing status differences, listening to subordinates, soliciting input, admitting mistakes and being willing to change course when a plan seems not to work.
How does Datumize define humility?
For Datumizers, being humble means to embrace modesty.
“I will Embrace Modesty by accepting my colleagues’ feedbacks and new ideas. I’m always eager to learn from anyone, anywhere!”
We perceive humility as respect for others and a willingness to subordinate one’s own interest for the common good. We constantly promote the success of others and accept responsibility for our mistakes and failures, trying to learn from them. We are open to differing points of view and know how to remain calm in challenging circumstances. Of course, we don’t know it all, and we are humble enough to admit it. We are constantly learning, widening our field of experience at every opportunity. We are humble about our achievements too, because we know that they can only serve as triggers to achieving more. We never underestimate our competition.
Hence, for Sunethra Boyinova, (Datumize Product Manager), humility means “to receive successes and failures gratefully, for one constantly learns from both of them.”
María Cabrera (Datumize Senior Product Owner Specialist) believes that “being humble at work equals to learning from people around, independently of their position or the authority level within the organization. Also, it’s crucial to show respect to all of the colleagues.” Apart from that, María is positive that one should not be afraid of failures and always be ready to learn from his/her mistakes.
Irina Lyashchenko (Datumize UX/UI Graphic Designer) maintains that “humility is a unique ability to have a balance between your own ego and others’ ego. Openness to diverse, at times, contrasting perspectives is of a great importance too.”
When talking about humility as a virtue, one needs to remember that great leaders always practised this value. Power made them more humble. With humility comes wisdom. As they say, “pride makes us artificial, but humility makes us real.”
Be humble, be teachable, and always keep learning!
