Be An Audacious And Humble Leader

I think we so often equate leadership with being experts – the leader is supposed to come in and fix things.  But in this interconnected world we live in now, it’s almost impossible for just one person to do that.

So if we could only have more leaders who would start by just listening, just trying to understand what’s going wrong from the perspective of the people you’re supposed to serve – whether it’s your customers or people for whom you want the world to change.

That’s according to Jacqueline Novogratz, C.E.O of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.

Novogratz also notes:

We talk about our values in pairs, and there is a tension or a balance between them.  We talk about listening and leadership; accountability and generosity; humility and audacity.  You’ve got to have the humility to see the world as it is . . . but have the audacity to know why you are trying to make it be different, to imagine the way it could be.  And then the immutable values are respect and integrity.

Read more about Jacqueline Novogratz.