Humility in the project management: strength or weakness?

I am not a project manager but I think humility in general is a strength and not a weakness as it builds better relationships between people. I don't know about others but I feel much more comfortable working or being in any kind of relationship with a person that interacts with others with humility. The position of the person in question does't even matter, all that matters is that I have some kind of relationship with him/her.

Probably for project managers humility is important as their work depends a lot on other people upon which they have no control or power. It is important for project managers to build strong relationships with these people and humility will definitely help.

For instance project managers have to establish good relationships with the management of the company for which they work as the management sponsors the projects and controls the resources that are being used in them. The relationship with the customers is probably even more important as the success of the project is when the customer is pleased.

In addition in the IT world project managers must also build strong good relationships with the project team members as most project managers lack domain knowledge and have no formal authority over the team members. When you are not the boss of a group of people, you can't understand in detail what they are doing but you are responsible to a large extent for the results of their work I think humility becomes almost mandatory for success.

Hi Fosco,

I don't consider humility as having to do with processes specifically. It's more of a character trait, the way you perceive yourself relative to others, and a way of interacting with the world and people. A humble person will equally value others as much as themselves. I see humility as being on the opposite end of the same spectrum as ego. But this is just my opinion, of course!