Humility

Imitate Jesus and Socrates

Benjamin Franklin as interpreted by Andreas Landman

This is the last of the Benjamin Franklin virtues. According to Steve Jones, Benjamin Franklin was asked by his peers to add this virtue because Benjamin Franklin did not have Humility on his list – after all, after achieving the other virtues, could he really want to be humble?

But being humble is not what Benjamin Franklin meant by humility. His point was that since people don’t know everything immediately, they need examples of how to act to be more effective. Whose lead do you take?

In the blogs that follow, I will evaluate the proposed fundamental principles of human effectiveness against some of Stephen Covey’s principles underlying the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.