We're Looking for Someone Humble
- TrudyS
- 7 days ago
- 7 min read
The Word Your Job Description Is Hiding Behind
A conversation worth having in the nonprofit sector
Somewhere between the required qualifications and the obligatory note about competitive salaries, a word keeps appearing in nonprofit job postings. It sits quietly, sandwiched between "passionate" and "mission-driven," nodding to a quality that sounds entirely reasonable — even virtuous. The word is humble.
And yet, more and more nonprofit leaders are pausing when they see it. Raising an eyebrow. Asking each other: what does this really mean?
It's a conversation worth having out loud.
What "Humble" Sounds Like on the Surface
On its face, asking for humility in a candidate isn't unreasonable. The nonprofit sector runs on collaboration. Our work is almost never about us — it's about the communities we serve. A leader who can't subordinate their ego to the mission is a genuine liability. In that context, wanting someone who is humble seems not just reasonable but principled.
There's also a legitimate argument that the word pushes back against the cult of the charismatic nonprofit executive — the visionary ED who speaks at TED, builds a personal brand, and eventually leaves the organization hollowed out around the mythology of their personality. If "humble" is a corrective to that, good. We've seen the damage that dynamic does.
That's the positive case, and it's real.
But Then the Conversation Gets More Complicated
Here's what nonprofit leaders have been saying to each other behind the scenes: humble rarely appears in job descriptions in isolation. It tends to show up alongside phrases like "no job too small," "willing to wear many hats," "collaborative team player," and "comfortable in a flat organizational structure." Read together, these phrases start to paint a picture — and the picture isn't always flattering to the employer.
Sometimes "humble" is doing the quiet work of communicating several things the hiring organization doesn't want to say directly:
We don't pay well, and we need you to be okay with that. Asking someone to be humble about their professional worth is different from asking them to be genuinely collaborative. When organizations can't offer market-rate compensation, they sometimes reach for cultural values to fill the gap. "We need someone who isn't in it for the money" — which, when dressed up in virtue language, becomes: we need someone humble.
We have a difficult culture, and we need you to adapt to it rather than change it. Humble candidates, the thinking goes, won't push back. They won't ask uncomfortable questions about strategy. They won't name dysfunction when they see it. This is particularly concerning in organizations where the status quo has calcified around a long-tenured leader or an insular board.
We want someone who will defer to leadership. There's a meaningful difference between humility and deference, but "humble" in a job description can blur that line. Organizations that have had conflict with previous employees who "didn't fit the culture" sometimes reach for this word as a shorthand for: we want someone who won't challenge us.
The Gender Dimension
Research on language bias in job descriptions consistently finds that certain words function as signals — often unconsciously — that discourage particular groups from applying. Words like "competitive," "dominant," and "decisive" skew masculine. Words like "collaborative," "nurturing," and "supportive" skew feminine.
Where does "humble" land? This is where it gets complicated.
For women candidates, "humble" can function as a double bind. Women are already socialized in most Western cultures to minimize their achievements, soften their asks, and downplay their expertise. A woman who reads "humble" in a job description may absorb it as confirmation of what she's already been told: don't take up too much space. She may self-select in — or, increasingly, she may self-select out, recognizing the word as a signal that the organization is going to ask her to shrink.
For men, particularly white men who have been socialized toward confidence and self-promotion in professional settings, "humble" might read as a cultural value to aspire to rather than a behavior already expected of them. The word may land differently — as interesting rather than constraining.
Neither interpretation is universal, but both matter. When a word in a job description lands differently depending on who is reading it, that's a problem for equity in hiring.
The Race Dimension
This is perhaps where the conversation gets most uncomfortable, and most important.
For candidates of color — particularly Black candidates — the request for "humility" in a predominantly white organizational context carries a specific historical weight. As hiring equity consultants have observed about working in white spaces, certain cultural values language in job descriptions is "rarely objective" — it often means showing up to work in a particular way that centers whiteness as the norm.
Black professionals, Latino professionals, Indigenous professionals, and others from communities of color have often been socialized with deep communal, spiritual, or cultural understandings of humility that are genuine and embodied. And yet they also know that in white-led organizations, "humble" can become a mechanism for code-switching — a requirement to suppress cultural identity, professional confidence, and authentic self-expression in order to be legible as "a good fit."
When a Black woman with 20 years of leadership experience reads "humble" in a nonprofit job description, she may be entirely capable of intellectual and interpersonal humility — and she may also recognize that what's being asked is something else entirely: to be small. To not challenge. To defer to a white leadership structure that may never have examined its own assumptions.
That's not humility. That's assimilation. And it's exhausting.
The Code-Switching Question
Code-switching — the practice of adjusting language, tone, behavior, and self-presentation to fit the dominant culture of a space — is a real and documented phenomenon, and it carries a real cognitive and emotional cost, particularly for people of color and for anyone who exists outside the dominant cultural norm of an organization.
When "humble" appears in a job description at a nonprofit that lacks racial diversity in its leadership, candidates of color are often right to read it as a request for a particular kind of code-switching. Not the universal kind — not everyone being willing to adapt — but a directional kind: adapt toward us, toward our norms, our communication styles, our sense of what professionalism looks and sounds like.
Organizations that genuinely value humility should be asking themselves whether they are equally humble about their own cultural defaults.
What to Do Instead
If your organization is drafting a job description and reaches for "humble," pause and ask: what behavior are we actually trying to describe? Be specific. Some alternatives that actually say what you mean:
Instead of "humble," try describing the actual behaviors: listens actively before forming conclusions, attributes team success to the team, open to giving and receiving constructive feedback, comfortable elevating others' ideas over their own, willing to take on tasks outside their formal role when needed by the team. These descriptions can be evaluated. They can be asked about in interviews. They can be modeled by leadership. "Humble" cannot.
If you're asking for someone who won't demand appropriate compensation, fix your compensation instead. If you're asking for someone who won't challenge the culture, examine your culture. If you're asking for someone who will defer rather than lead, be honest about whether you actually want to hire a leader.
A Final Word for Nonprofit Leaders
The nonprofit sector likes to think of itself as more values-aligned, more equitable, and more self-aware than the corporate world. Sometimes that's true. Often, the gap between our stated values and our actual hiring practices is significant — and it shows up in the language we use before we ever meet a candidate.
"Humble" is one small word. But language is never just language. It's a window into organizational culture, power dynamics, and often unconscious expectations about who belongs.
If you're going to use the word, know what you mean by it. And if you can't explain what you mean — if "humble" is carrying freight you haven't examined — it may be time to leave it out of the posting entirely, and do the harder work of describing the culture you actually want to build.
That kind of self-examination? That's humility.
Sources & Further Reading
The following resources informed the broader research and thinking behind this post. They are offered as background reading and jumping-off points for nonprofit leaders who want to go deeper on equitable hiring practices — not as direct citations of specific claims made above.
On implicit bias in nonprofit hiring and "culture fit" Dr. Joanna Shoffner Scott, How to Address Implicit Bias in Nonprofit Hiring: Tips to Distinguish Between Culture Fit and Bias, Stamey Street Consulting Group. stameystreet.com A particularly valuable read for nonprofit leaders on how "culture fit" language — including values-based descriptors — can mask bias in ways that disproportionately affect candidates of color.
On unconscious bias in job descriptions generally 14 Examples of Unconscious Bias in Job Descriptions, Ongig Blog. blog.ongig.com A practical, well-researched breakdown of specific language patterns in job postings that signal exclusion, including gendered words and language that skews toward particular demographic groups.
On reducing unconscious bias in nonprofit recruiting specifically Reducing Unconscious Bias in Nonprofit Recruiting, Blue Avocado. blueavocado.org Blue Avocado is a trusted resource for the nonprofit sector. This piece addresses how adjective choices in job descriptions can send subtle and exclusionary signals to candidates.
On gendered language and hiring How to Avoid Bias in Job Descriptions, Selby Jennings. selbyjennings.com Covers how words commonly associated with masculine or feminine traits shape who applies — and who doesn't — for a given role.
On unconscious bias in recruiting from an academic perspective Improve Decision-Making in Hiring: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them, Harvard Business School. hbs.edu Includes discussion of how language in written materials signals to candidates whether or not they are the "right fit," and the downstream effects on candidate diversity.
On nonprofit hiring practices broadly Nonprofit Job Descriptions: The Complete Guide for Success, Donorly. donorly.com A practical guide that includes tips on writing inclusive job descriptions for nonprofit organizations, with attention to diversity considerations.
This post reflects ongoing conversations among nonprofit leaders and practitioners and is intended to spark reflection and dialogue. The author encourages readers to engage directly with the source materials above for research-grounded perspectives.
Comments