Is Vulnerability Just For The Weak?

Vulnerability historically carried a danger warning. So, what has changed in recent years that it is now a crucial part of the modern interpretation of Executive Presence? ?A new understanding of how employees thrive under more compassionate leadership is shifting vulnerability from a weakness to a strength, but that doesn’t mean making the shift is all reward, no risk.

• Are you still frightened by the prospect of bringing forth your truly authentic self?
• Do you shudder at the possibility of being judged by others because you believe in transparency?
• Do you cringe at the notion that empathy is just another word for weakness?

?Your ‘fight or flight’ stress response will be activated by vulnerability until the threat of being open and honest is something that is faced, embraced and received positively by you and your team.?

The Value of Vulnerability

Inspirational leaders role model vulnerability themselves – not to attract pity or to use as an excuse for performance challenges – but to show the strength of vulnerability to others so they can understand the key life events that have shaped them and therefore shape the values that guide their leadership style. This understanding through vulnerable leadership goes on to grow:

• Deeper connections
• Improved trust and productivity
• Adaptability and resilience
• Psychological safety
• Innovation and creativity
• Leadership intuition

Impactful leadership is all about helping people to be safely themselves and perform at their best. In our busy worlds the desire to simply assume that someone is ‘weird’, untrustworthy’, ‘arrogant’ ‘overly ambitious’, or ‘weak’ is lazy leadership. Seeking to understand and role modelling vulnerability before you expect others to do so creates the safety high-level performance requires.

“Many courageous C-Suite leaders I currently coach have decided to ‘come out’ as neurodivergent. For some, the reaction of their bosses and their team has brought them to tears. Happy tears. And as we all know, happy teams make their numbers!” - Julie Stokes, TPA Executive Coach

4 Steps to Incorporate Vulnerability into Your Leadership Style

In their excellent new book, The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out, McKinsey senior partners Dana Maor, Hans-Werner Kaas, Kurt Strovink, and Ramesh Srinivasan highlight "vulnerability" as an important leadership strength and how to show it.

Model Vulnerability

• Align your words with your emotions. Learn to express emotions. You can practice this through creative means such as art of music. Also, learn to emote with expression. Sound inspiring if you are inspired; show concern when appropriate.
• Be open about your inner life. Start team meetings by sharing what you are thinking and feeling. What are you excited or concerned about? Invite others to open up as well. The quality of dialogue will improve.
• Share personal stories. Tell others about some of your most challenging moments and how they have impacted your leadership, or about times when you have failed and what happened.
• Admit when you don’t know. It’s okay to not have all of the answers. In these situations, don’t make up an answer. Be transparent and instead focus on connecting your team with the resources they need to get the answer.

Vulnerability Comes With Risks

As coaches we often help leaders embrace vulnerability as a strength while also staying ?mindful of the way others around them will respond. Being able to assess the impact of your style on others is an important part of landing vulnerability in an authentic and manageable way.

Imagine you’re facing the following scenario: Your partner was just diagnosed with a serious illness and you’re considering whether to tell your Board. Based on what you know about your organization’s culture, will the Board respond with:

• Fear that your partner’s illness will be a distraction (high risk)?
• Partnership in developing a plan together for what it means for you, your family, and your work (low risk)?

Awareness of the risk level is crucial to making decisions about whether, when, and how to share vulnerability.

Sometimes, as TPA Executive Coach Vanessa Tennyson shares, the risk can be worth it and more.

“Vulnerability requires courage or so I am repeatedly told. When I made the decision to transition from a male form to a female form, the most common refrain was, “You are truly courageous.” And yet, it was not courage that drove me to change gender at 55, it was an act of definitive vulnerability. I’d had enough, and decided that “being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally” was far better than lying every day about who I truly am.

Surprisingly, I became stronger, more open, able to see reality through the lens of vulnerability that I could not have imagined prior. People did not seek to harm but sought to understand. They became more open, curious, and aware of themselves.

In that moment of awareness, others found the strength to become more vulnerable themselves and seek out how their own truth might help them and others to create a better world around them. Not the world over - though that would be amazing - just the world they live in, impacting one person at a time, creating greatness where moments before it did not exist, save for two people coming to a greater understanding through mutual vulnerability.”

Are You Ready to Be Vulnerable?

Great leaders inspire through their words and actions, and while they may reflect and sift through all that may result from a decision to act, they never hesitate to be authentic, transparent, and empathetic (in other words, vulnerable) about who they are and what they stand for. Vulnerability and its brethren – Authenticity, Transparency and Empathy, Listening to Learn – are the hallmarks of strength and warmth leadership. If you’re ready to open up as a leader, an executive coach can help you assess the best path forward as a person and leader.?

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Julie Stokes OBE , with over 30 years of experience as a CEO, Non-Executive Director, and Clinical/Health Psychologist, is a Partner and an Executive Coach at The Preston Associates.

Vanessa Tennyson , a seasoned business executive with over three decades of C-suite experience in professional services, talent management, and operations, is an Executive Coach at The Preston Associates.

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