Are Humility and Sincerity Considered Trite?

Writing in the View from the Ark of the Catholic Times, the columnist, a university professor, wants us to examine why Google the technology company would put humility and sincerity high on their list of qualifications for employment. 

This has always been considered  important in the history of thought but why would a modern-day very successful advanced company put it as a qualification for employment over so many other important qualities? He laments that in the past in Korea, humility and sincerity  were important qualities to inculcate in our students but in recent years has disappeared.

For Google, this talk is not about virtue for virtue's sake but a necessary quality for their employees to succeed. In interviews, they take for granted the qualifications they need for the job, but if a humble attitude is not perceived they will not be employed is what the columnist understands from what he has heard.

Humility in this perspective comes with knowledge and the faculty of being able to work with those who are less able than oneself, and to have the ability and capacity to learn from them. Without this capacity, they will not be able to communicate and work with others from the different parts of the world.

This is not brought up because Google is a giant in the competitive market but to show how important they consider the ability to work together with others and the need for us in our education programs and formation in the family and school to bring it back as important.

Are we  cultivating humble talent for the future? We are not. The quality of our  education is not bad we are doing what is considered correct and what needs to be done but forgetting the qualities of humility and sincerity.

This was always considered in the Church's teaching and we have been exposed to it over and over again, in the example of Christ. Difficult, however, to internalize the message. We tend to forget the place right under the light is darkest.

Trite as this sounds to our ears we have to reconsider our understanding of the matter. Since we have an international company such as Google who are looking for these qualities should we not evaluate our search for specifications for employment that we have stressed? We have ignored humility and sincerity.

These qualities are not merely  a grace of character but enable one to learn and grow with another. We have forgotten this truth, he concludes and allowed  competition be the vantage point from which we judge. Let us change the competitive viewpoint to one in excelling in humility and sincerity.