Vulnerability is how teams win. Part II - Why it's important
Last week I wrote about what Vulnerability is. If you missed it, you can click here to read more.
This week we’ll look at why it’s important for high-performance teams. I shall do this by looking at what a team looks like without vulnerability. But let’s start with the individual.
Tell me if any of this this sounds familiar:
- You spend your time and energy pretending
- You go through each day trying to do everything yourself
- You work to appear the strongest, most rock-solid spouse/partner/colleague/friend ever
- You never say no to anything
- You agonise over the slightest admission of weakness you made to a co-worker in the kitchen
- And you hate every second of it
These are the hallmarks of someone whose vulnerability muscle needs more flexing. This story should serve as an example of the real business impact that a lack of vulnerability can have.
When I was starting out in a new job I received a request for something. I can't even remember what it was, but I didn't know how to fulfil the request.
Rather than ask for help (aka practice vulnerability) I ignored the problem, and email. I focused on tasks I could do and/or wanted to do.
Weeks, and many emails, passed, until finally this colleague sent me a complaint. They copied in my Team Leader, Director and General Manager.
Ouch.
Now it was a big problem. I was in trouble. The work was overdue. The client was angry. Everyone's time was wasted.
Had I just asked for help, I could have avoided the embarrassment. The image of the company in the eyes of the client would have been protected. My colleagues' time would not have been wasted.
In the performance review that followed, the lesson was clear;
Not knowing how to do the task wasn't the problem. Not asking for help was.
If you're a leader, you're likely made uncomfortable at the thought of this happening in your team. But it can, and likely does, all the time. Especially if you do not have a team culture that practices vulnerability.
Let's look at a lack of vulnerability from a team perspective.
“If vulnerability is absent in a team, then that team spends their time being inauthentic. This is a group of people who are false. They pretend all day long about how they feel and what they think, what they know, and what is going on”.
To put it in stronger terms, they lie to each other, and to their leaders. Their leaders lie to their team. And no-one has any clue what is actually going on. And if they don't know what's going on, how can they solve the problems that will inevitably arise?
Are you convinced about how important Vulnerability is yet? Good, because next week we’ll look at how to make it happen for your organisation.
For a deeper dive into Vulnerability and its importance, this article is great: -
"Vulnerability: the Key to Better Relationships" - Mark Manson