Coaching for Leaders

Coaching for Leaders


725: Leading with Humility: Three Shifts that Empower Others, with Joel Pérez

March 16, 2025
Joel Pérez: Dear White Leader

Joel Pérez is an executive and leadership coach, speaker, and consultant who is passionate about helping leaders and organizations achieve their goals and develop a posture of cultural humility. He has over twenty years of experience in higher education, serving in various key leadership roles. He is the author of Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility*.


We could all get a bit better at bringing a dose of humility into our work. Inside organizations, cultural humility starts with how leaders show up each day. In this episode, Joel and I examine three shifts that will help us better empower others.


Key Points

  • While humility starts with an individual, it must move beyond them to improve the organization.
  • Maintain high standards while avoiding perfectionism by discussing how mistakes get handled in advance.
  • To prevent a sense of urgency from rushing a bad decision, consider who’s missing from the conversation.
  • Listen, ask curious questions, and say thank you when receiving criticism.
  • Criticism doesn’t need to be addressed in the moment. Consider reflection, other data points, and responding more in a future interaction.

Resources Mentioned

Interview Notes

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