The age-old challenge of leadership is balancing confidence with an authentic desire to learn and a realization that you don’t, in fact, know it all. This starts to get tricky once you have succeeded in something, built a team, and strive for efficiency and scale.  When you become recognized as an expert — whether it be among your colleagues or more broadly — people will depend on you. Your challenge will be to act upon your strengths and successes while also grounding your confidence with a sense of humility. The key is self-awareness and sensitivity to what goes on around you. But, in the busy every-day, how is this achieved?

When I hear stories of fabulous leaders of small-businesses, a common theme is flat hierarchy and a strong team chemistry. These leaders will often admit that their success is really a group achievement. However, as time passes and the success scales up, leaders become beacons of insight. Suddenly the attribution shifts from the team to the leader, and this can become a spotlight of seduction. The leader might just forget the history behind the company’s success.

Great leaders are in their optimal zone up until the point when they start to wear their stripes. As soon as you SHOW how good you think you are, people will start to desperately look for flaws. One common best-practice I hear from successful leaders is to ground presumptuous behavior and confidence with a constant effort to ask questions. If you are asking questions, you are communicating a desire to learn and you are ensuring constant reception to your surroundings. Questions prompt self-awareness and provide a window into ones’ surroundings.