Quote-A-Day: Day 318

Taking #pride in your work is never the same as #bragging about it. #QuoteADay #Day318 #edchat #edu #BeHumble

Yesterday was the third time in my life that I’ve completed a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle.  

I’ll be the first to admit that as complete as it is, there are a number of words that formed that I have no idea what they are, or even if they are the correct spellings.

My "Completed" Crossword

That being said, I still completed it (in some form, anyway J ).

As minor as this success is, it is important that we take pride in the work that we do.

And, that we be humble about it.

The best leaders share their prideful nature with those they serve, knowing that pride in one’s work, by extension, leads to pride in one’s community (and it encourages others to feel prideful as well).

But, pride is very different from bragging.  When we brag, we’re not sharing the work we’ve done to help others get better.  Rather, we’re sharing it to make ourselves sound better.

While pride builds community up, bragging stops it in its tracks, or tears it down, bit by bit.  The problem with bragging is that it puts the needs of the speaker before the needs of the community at large, and while we need to make sure that we do think about ourselves from time-to-time, we can grow more leaders and learners with pride than we can with bragging.

So share your successes, but do so from a stance of humility, rather than a sense of self-importance.  If we want to cultivate communities that focus on the importance of the collective, than we have to make sure we model this when sharing our own successes.