Humility Can Make Business Leadership Stronger, Not Weaker

By Daniel Okafor

Ethan Willis’s new book, Humble Power, is a USA Today bestseller, according to Robyn D. Shulman’s expert profile. Shulman describes Willis as a leadership expert and entrepreneur who has spent several decades studying the difference between humility and ego.

Willis’s conclusion does not treat confidence as a problem. He argues that humility can make confidence more accurate, leading to more useful outcomes in business, community and personal lives.

“Humility isn’t a weakness,” he says. “It’s a multiplier of our strengths.”

Shulman begins with the incentive that gives humility a bad brand. Business tends to reward certainty. Strong, loud opinions attract attention, and leaders often gain credit for appearing to have every answer, even when admitting uncertainty would serve them better.

Shulman says readers associate humility with modesty, deference, self-effacement and quietly giving everyone else credit. She calls those traits admirable, though not clearly advantageous at work.

What does Willis mean by humility?

Willis reverses that equation. He does not ask leaders to suppress confidence or surrender authority. He asks them to pair confidence with an accurate account of what they do not know.

In his framework, confidence identifies capability, while humility identifies uncertainty. Together, they let a leader act on known strengths without pretending to have resolved every unknown.

For a business reader, Willis’s point becomes an operating checklist rather than a personality ornament. Leaders use humility to test conviction against evidence and preserve the possibility that their preferred answer is incomplete.

Willis maintains that confidence and humility are not opposites. He places competitive advantage in that combination. Effective leaders can have a significant workplace impact because accurate confidence supports action without shutting out contrary evidence.

The book adds to Willis’s work as an entrepreneur and author. He is a former co-author with Ken Blanchard of The One-Minute Entrepreneur. Shulman pairs that credential with his analysis of ego, feedback and decision-making.

How does ego distort information?

Willis’s sharper claim is that ego changes what leaders can learn. In his research, ego does more than make people unpleasant; it distorts the information they are willing to accept.

In Willis’s account, the mechanism begins with identity. When people attach themselves to being right, contradictory information stops seeming useful and starts feeling like a threat. Critical thinking then disappears because accepting the contradiction appears to threaten the person, not merely challenge the idea.

This makes ego an information problem before it becomes a relationship problem. A leader can still receive feedback. Yet ego determines which inputs count as credible and which become resistance. Willis’s framework suggests that apparent certainty can reflect defensive filtering rather than superior judgment.

Willis describes the required shift this way:

“Feedback becomes information, not criticism—and then our identity is no longer tied to defending what we already believe.”

What should leaders do differently?

Willis’s model points to three practical changes:

• Separate capability from certainty. State what you know and identify what you do not know. Under Willis’s model, confidence then supports action without implying complete knowledge.
• Test feedback against the decision, not the self. Willis says feedback should become information rather than criticism. Leaders can use it to revise assumptions without treating every correction as a personal attack.
• Invite contradiction before commitment hardens. If every new fact feels threatening, leaders lose the chance to update. Humility keeps that channel open.

The mechanism is not public self-effacement. It is better information entering the decision.

Shulman’s profile offers a framework, not a quantified study. It cites no company results, revenue gains or failure rates. The case rests on Willis’s several decades studying humility and ego and on his proposition that better feedback makes confidence more accurate.

Willis’s larger business case is organizational. Leaders who absorb more useful information have a stronger basis for decisions. They can adjust before ego turns disagreement into resistance. The profile does not measure that effect; Willis presents it as a practical mechanism for better outcomes.

The business payoff comes when leaders can absorb contradictory evidence without defending their identity. Willis argues that this combination makes confidence more accurate and decisions more useful, without requiring leaders to abandon conviction.