44. Integrity requires humility
Although the importance of serving the people cannot be emphasized enough, there is a hidden risk here. SPs might think that it is not their jobs that are important but they themselves. However, SPs with integrity think small with regard to themselves, which requires humility. SPs can promote this by (1) avoiding seeing their power as a well- earned reward but rather as a consequence of the job, (2) attributing success to the environment and failure to themselves, and (3) the ability to laugh at themselves.
The importance of SPs’ work cannot be emphasized enough. The decisions, ideas, and proposals SPs put forward have far-reaching consequences for people, institutions, and society as a whole. By being conscious of the importance of their jobs, SPs avoid frivolousness, laziness, carelessness, and recklessness. Integrity therefore demands that SPs remain aware of the importance of their jobs.
On the other hand, the more SPs are aware of the importance of their work, the more likely they are to consider themselves, rather than their jobs, important. As French Sun King Louis XIV said, “L’état c’est moi,” (“I am the state”) as if he were the only person that mattered. A party chair was guilty of a similar boast at a municipal council meeting: “We’re all God, Mr Speaker.”236 It shows a lack of integrity if instead of adapting to the job, SPs mould the job to suit them, placing themselves above their work instead of inside or beneath it, using their position to serve personal interests instead of those of the people. This is inconsistent, lacking integrity with the purpose for which SPs are appointed. Overestimating oneself also increases the chance of behavior lacking integrity because it causes people to ignore signals from their surroundings (“I know better”), misappropriate privileges (“I have a right to it”), and stay in office too long (“They can’t manage without me”). People with integrity therefore think small with regard to themselves. As American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “A great man is always willing to be little.”237 This approach to self-perception avoids overestimation.
Humility can be promoted among other things by realizing that power is not something you have earned but something that follows from the job to be done. Without the job – and the consequent authorities, information, and networks – you would not have that power. SPs do not start out having power; they are given it.238 That power is not forever, but only for a specific, limited period. “We are all transitory,” as a politician put it.239 Or as Obama said, “We as leaders occupy these spaces temporarily.”240 As a reminder of this Bill Clinton had a glass box on the coffee table in the Oval Office with a piece of stone Neil Armstrong had brought back from the moon. When things became heated he said, “You see that rock? It’s 3.6 billion years old. We’re all just passing through.”241
Humility can also be promoted by – and shown in – the way people handle success and failure. People who overestimate themselves attribute successes to themselves and failures to others and the environment, perpetuating their inflated self-image. In order to avoid overestimating yourself, it is better to do the opposite, or at least to begin with, attributing success to the environment, and failure to yourself. This keeps us critical and prevents us from erroneously believing that we deserve our success. Abraham Lincoln, for example, attributed the winnings generally ascribed to him to his environment: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”242
Finally, humility can be promoted and demonstrated through the ability to laugh at ourselves. Self-mockery helps us keep both feet on the ground. George W. Bush made remarks with this effect at a graduation ceremony: “To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done,” he told Yale graduates before breaking into a grin. “To the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States.”243 Even without good grades, it is possible to become president. Bush saw himself as living proof and was not ashamed of it.244
Humility is also protective. Keeping the job and your own contribution in perspective ensures that you do not feel the need to be there for everyone or stand up for everything. This helps prevent us from wanting too much but doing nothing. Humility enables us to stand back from what is happening and to avoid ta