Originally found at Inc.
Oprah Winfrey clearly knows a little about confidence. Yet according to Oprah, confidence comes not from strength, but from vulnerability:
Most people think vulnerability is weakness. I live in the space of vulnerability... and that is what has made me so successful.
I think vulnerability is... the cornerstone of confidence. Allow yourself to take the risk, to be open, to live as a whole-hearted person. Do that, and you recognize that you're just like everybody else, and that gives you the confidence to be yourself.
Which is all you really need in life: to be more of yourself.
Take leadership. The best leaders don't project unshakable confidence. They realize that admitting weakness doesn't create more weakness; strong cultures can only happen when team members feel safe enough to tell one another the truth -- and that starts with leaders being willing to show they're fallible.
...As the authors of a study published in the Academy of Management Journal write:
... leader humility involves leaders modeling to followers how to grow and produces positive organizational outcomes by leading followers to believe that their own developmental journeys and feelings of uncertainty are legitimate in the workplace.
... the emergent humility in leadership model informs a broad range of leadership issues, including organizational development and change, the evolution of leader-follower relationships, new pathways for engaging followers, and integrating top-down and bottom-up organizing.
Continue reading the original article at Inc.
Read the original research in Academy of Management Journal.
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