I’ve fortunately had the opportunity to work with a lot of different types of people so far in my life with a lot of them playing some type of leadership role in whatever it is that they do. One challenge that they all had in common was the experience in working with people who always refuse to admit any wrong doings for fear of looking inferior or the thought of showing humiliation for something that is clearly a result of their own actions is not even an option.
Normally having a lot of pride should be a good thing as it helps to motivate you to continue doing what you believe in. However, in my opinion if it reaches to a point where you are constantly closed minded or preventing yourself from doing things that are necessary to achieving your goals that it is time to learn how to be humble as well when it comes to your professional life.
The reason I say this is that from what I have seen people who tend let their pride get in the way from doing what is right also tend to become obsessed in constantly lying to themselves and others which ultimately creates a negative situation for all. I’ve seen an example before where there was a person who was responsible in supervising a lot of people and one of his responsibilities was to select someone within his talent pool to train to become a supervisor like himself. People looked up to him as he had a good track record and so when he chose a candidate he was very confident that this was the ideal choice.
Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way as the person he chose constantly failed under pressure while also unsuccessfully being able to lead others. Regardless, he still stood by his decision. As time went on, the situation did not change and it reached to the point that other people began to lose respect for him. As unbelievable as it is, he still stood by his choice and then resorted to things such as trying to over embellish the person’s accomplishments while also undermining everyone else’s accomplishments as he did not want to look like a failure for choosing a person who was clearly unqualified and not ready for such responsibilities.
With that example, I can honestly say that the situation would have been better if his pride didn’t get in the way of his decision making process. On top of that, I personally think he was hindering his own growth by not learning that it is okay to fail and that how he comes back from failure is the real thing that he should have been focusing on at that point. Too much of anything is bad and the same goes for the amount of pride that you have in yourself I’d say. Like they say, you have to learn to swallow your pride at times. As mentioned, learning to be more humble can be the cure for that as we can’t forget that we are all constantly learning everyday in order to grow as a person.