Personal Lessons in Leadership: Vulnerability

Why Opening Up Helps You and Your Team Soar

Vulnerability is a great leader’s superpower.

It ties together elements of risk, uncertainty and emotional exposure — personally I lean more towards the idea of just exposure, and the requirement of being open.

Why is vulnerability so important for a leader?

Being vulnerable allows you to make real and solid connections with the people around you.

Success comes when people WANT to work with you, that they choose to be part of what you are doing.

If you want someone to lower their guard and take their armour off, you have to take yours off first.

You cannot expect someone from your team to come to you with a problem, with something they are struggling with and lay it all out on the table for to “manage” them and have a one way conversation.

This doesn’t work. It’s not effective.

And what ends up happening is that you don’t make the right connection and will most likely not actually get to the root of the problem — let alone really solving it.

The best way that you can help your team and those around you when they are struggling is to SHARE with them situations and experiences where YOU were struggling with the same thing or something similar.

Talk about your mistakes. Talk about how you felt. Talk about what you learned from those situations.

Show them what you now do different because of what you took away from a similar experience.

This is a lot harder than it sounds.

It’s uncomfortable. You may catch the other person off guard at first. They may not have expected their boss to open up to them. They may not open up as much right away.

This is normal and more than okay.

It’s your job as a leader though to promote this level of communication and access.

When your team feels safe and they know that they are able to come to you with anything, it’s powerful.

Being vulnerable allows for this to happen. It allows for teams to reach that next level of psychological safety and performance.

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