PROTECTING VULNERABILITY: JUST HOW VULNERABLE SHOULD WE BE?

Vulnerability. It didn’t used to be something we talked about, especially not in professional circles. Now, authentic leaders, leadership teams, and organizations strive to cultivate vulnerability.?

But is there a limit to how vulnerable we should be? And if so, what is it and how do we know?

PROTECTING A RESOURCE

While we hear a lot about individuals, teams, and organizations needing to be more vulnerable, vulnerability is something best experienced in small doses, in safe spaces. It’s a powerful resource, that when protected and cared for, can yield long-lasting and profound results.?

Overspending it can leave us (and those with whom we are being vulnerable) emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. Underspending it creates the barriers we’re trying to break down.?

The key to protecting this resource, so we can tap into it consciously, carefully, and sustainably, is learning to practice ways of showing up that can lead to vulnerable connections, spaces in which others can step in and see themselves, practice empathy, and build trust with us.?

And it’s important for us to recognize the value in both offering these doorways to connection and knowing when to hold back our vulnerability, when it’s better to be less vulnerable than more. Because there is a balance to be struck. If we are too vulnerable, we can become exhausted and it can be hard for others to respond in kind. If we are not vulnerable enough, it is hard for people to connect deeply with us. In balance, practicing vulnerability leads to personal insights, greater empathy, and deep resilience.

FOUR BEHAVIORS THAT HELP US EXPERIENCE VULNERABILITY

When we use the term vulnerability, we are often referring not to experiencing the state of being vulnerable itself, but to specific behaviors that create the opportunity for us to share something vulnerable and others to respond to that state of vulnerability.

Here are four of the top behaviors we can cultivate to access spaces in which vulnerability can thrive, while creating resiliency and keeping that resource protected.?

Authenticity: Drawing others out and understanding ourselves.

Sharing foibles, successes, fallibility, fears, and love can be a great invitation to others to do the same–and to be more fully integrated with ourselves.

Empathy: Helping others feel seen or heard.?

When we share our own challenges, struggles, and stumbling blocks, and listen to understand others’ challenges and struggles, we help them feel seen and heard, we become approachable, and we invite connection.?

Transparency: Bringing a group or team together.?

Transparency, along with honesty and taking responsibility, fosters strength, resilience, kinship, and feelings of safety in teams and groups.

Humility: Lifting others up.

Sharing credit and successes is a powerful foundational tool in creating spaces where others feel empowered and safe in bringing more of themselves to the table.

DISCERNMENT LEADS TO RESILIENCE

When we share ourselves through behaviors that invite vulnerability, we reveal who we are, while creating a sustainable vulnerability practice. Others are able to see and experience our beliefs and standards in action, and they have the opportunity to connect with us on a deeper level, potentially responding with their own vulnerability-building behaviors.

By consciously protecting how, and how much we offer our own vulnerability to others, we create a sustainable practice that allows us to share, model, and hold space for others, so that we can create deep wells of connection that don’t run dry.

SHARING OURSELVES CAREFULLY: PROTECTING VULNERABILITY?

Many years ago, I started working for a family hardware business, helping them rebrand and design a marketing strategy. I was in the first stages of unwinding my life from that of my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s and I desperately wanted two things. One, for no one to know how hard I was grieving my divorce, or that I was even getting a divorce. And two, to never make a mistake or be found out making a mistake.

I spent years trying to build relationships with people on the management team I was supporting, and somehow I couldn’t get through. I had good ideas, I was helpful, I stayed late, I worked weekends. And yet.

Then one Monday, about six years in, I sat down to go over sales numbers with one of the store managers, Sarah. From across the room with her back turned, she asked me how my weekend was. I started to answer and then without warning, even to myself, I started to cry. I had spent the weekend packing up my things after my first post-divorce breakup. Six years I never cried, never talked about a loss that I could feel in my bones, and then tears over a boyfriend. I was mortified.

Then something miraculous happened. Sarah dropped what she was doing, grabbed a box of tissues, came and sat down next to me, pulled me into a huge bear hug and said, “You just tell me what you need and my husband and I will help. We’ve got a truck if you have anything big to move.”

We had never hugged, never had a deep conversation, I’d never gotten her enthusiastic support on anything, and then this.?

VULNERABILITY IS AN OUTCOME

Vulnerability in the professional space has been a hot topic for years now. Leaders want to cultivate it, organizations want to harness it. But when we speak about vulnerability in the workplace, we are speaking about two distinct things.?

• True vulnerability, where we reveal something personal or scary enough that we feel open to criticism or some form of professional harm (retribution, labeling, demotion, lack of promotion).
• A host of other characteristics that are often confused with vulnerability: authenticity, transparency, humility, empathy.

When we talk about creating a work environment that cultivates vulnerability, what we want is a workspace that feels safe, that helps people feel empowered, that rewards transparency, empathy, kindness, trust, humility, and authenticity.?

Vulnerability is an outcome of those practices and should be treated very carefully, protected for its fragility and for its rarity. True vulnerability isn’t something that needs to happen every day, or even every week. It’s not something that needs to happen between every person in a company, or within large groups of people.?

When we confuse vulnerability with other ways of building trust, we diminish its power and this can lead to a culture of performative vulnerability, where the motivation for sharing comes from seeking validation or attention, manipulating perception, and a desire to increase power or prestige.

Often, true vulnerability isn’t planned, but we can become more conscious and aware of its power, choosing when to go deep and when to build connection with other tools like transparency or empathy, resources that don’t leave us as emotionally exposed.

PROTECTING VULNERABILITY

Different manifestations of vulnerability exist for different people. What feels vulnerable for one person may be second nature to someone else. For me, asking for help, admitting I didn’t know how to do something, or had made a mistake, were all incredibly vulnerable. For others, those things are a doorway to connection and shared responsibility.?

Because vulnerability leaves us open (to either attack or deeper connection) it’s imperative to protect the power of our own vulnerability. When we overuse it, we create too much exposure which can lead to fatigue, anxiety, fearfulness and protective responses–the exact opposite of the outcome we want. When we underutilize it, we miss the opportunity to become more open and receptive to others and ourselves, which is the key to the connection we all crave.??

Jocelyn Lovelle is a freelance writer, brand strategy consultant and fCMO with a successful Substack, who works with founders, solopreneurs and coaches in a range of industries from wine to health care to accounting. Jocelyn specializes in writing must-read, thought-leadership content for LinkedIn, newsletters, blogs and Substack and collaborates with Emily Soccorsy, principal brand strategist of Root + River, a brand strategy and content firm.

She loves connection and conversation about writing, brands, and dogs. Jump over to DMs if you want to chat.

She's also teaching a 6-week course on writing with Root + River that starts in March. Find out more here.

(This article first appeared in a Newsletter for Root + River and appears on its website here.)