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But if you can – just for a second – silence that anxious voice that’s afraid of being judged and gather enough self-confidence to embrace and show your vulnerabilities, you’ll have a chance at becoming the leader your team really needs.
Intro
Welcome to Lead It Better, the podcast made to help you become a more impactful leader.
Whether you have years of experience or just getting started on your leadership journey, you’re in the right place to pick up practical, actionable advice. We’re gonna discuss not only how to best deal with leadership-related questions and situations but explore why a particular approach might work better than others.
My name’s Marton, and for the better part of a decade, I’ve been helping aspiring, new and experienced leaders develop their skills and leadership strategies.
This is episode 6, and this week we’re gonna talk about vulnerability, why it’s a strength rather than a weakness, and how you can get more comfortable with it.
It’s not about you
New leaders often struggle with this, and I have yet to meet a good leader who hasn’t learned to lean into it.
I was no exception to this: as soon as it was decided that I’d be promoted to a leadership position, I felt a certain amount of pressure. Having the benefit of hindsight, I now know that most, if not every bit of that pressure came from inside me. I wanted to prove to myself and to my manager that she made the right choice and that I could take care of her business and people. More than anything, I wanted to be the best leader this team has ever had, especially because I knew my predecessor and thought quite highly of her.
She had an amazingly thoughtful way with people, and – from what I saw – she could connect with everyone on a personal level. She was patient, remained kind even during difficult conversations, and held great team meetings with really original ideas. For example, gamifying the education of the processes we needed to follow. These were all things I felt I couldn’t live up to, even if I tried to emulate her.
On top of all that, she had years and years of experience doing what the team was doing, so she knew her way around the tools, systems, and processes and had a vast network to rely on. While I came in basically as a newcomer with only a few months under my belt. I was horrified by the idea of being asked about some detail I might not have ever seen. In my mind, the team would have trouble accepting me as their team leader – who am I to tell them what to do when they know for a fact that I have none of their experience?
Funny how this is the exact thought that can help establish you as a trustworthy leader – you just need to reframe it and say it with a bit more confidence and conviction.
Try it this way: who am I to tell you all what to do when I know for a fact that you’re the experts?
I know. To pull this off, you might need a bit of self-confidence – and that’s easier with more experience.
But remember what we talked about in the very first episode? Your job isn’t to be an expert; your job is to ensure everyone else can do their job. Still, I know first-hand that it can feel awkward to fess up to the things you think you’re lacking, but if you do, it provides you with an opportunity to also talk about all the things you can do and enables your team members to reciprocate with the same honesty, allowing you to partner up and work as one team.
Try to avoid my mistake of aiming for perfection. While I intended to be the best leader my team has had, I initially defined “best” with my own standards, not theirs. I almost became someone chasing expertise and an image of flawlessness, which – if I’m honest – translates to a know-it-all robot, not a human who cares. I got lucky, though. So lucky. Early on, I received a tiny bit of feedback that helped set me straight and focus on what the team needed, not what I thought of myself. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even constructive feedback.
A few weeks in, my manager at the time was doing some skip-level one-on-ones, ensuring everything was going fine with the new team leader (a.k.a. me) and collecting the team’s feedback – primarily focusing on questions where they might not have had enough trust yet to share with me directly. There was the usual good and bad of any new leadership appointment, but the bit that stuck with me, that surprised me, is that one of the team members commented on how they really liked my decisiveness, contrasting it to how my predecessor could take days to make up her mind about a business case. Highlighting that even if I didn’t know something, I would commit to getting the answer and then either deliver on time or follow up accordingly.
While I was happy that they were happy, I was even happier with the realization that I didn’t need to hide (what I considered) my weaknesses. The only thing I needed to do was to serve the team to the best of my abilities. Their standard of a good leader was about effort and consistency, about making their lives easier – not someone whose sole aim is to not look dumb in front of an audience.
While it might feel counterintuitive, with all of your instincts advising you against it, letting yourself be vulnerable will enable you to be honest and bring your true self to the conversation. This, in turn, allows human connections and trust to be built. You might mess up sometimes. Heck, being human, you’ll definitely mess up; you’ll say the wrong thing, or you’ll say the right thing but in the wrong way. No matter what, you can remain human if you lay out your mistake for everyone to see and ask for forgiveness.
If it’s not something you’ve done before, it can be damned hard to admit to your imperfections and vulnerabilities. But if you can – just for a second – silence that anxious voice that’s afraid of being judged and gather enough self-confidence to embrace and show your vulnerabilities, you’ll have a chance at becoming the leader your team really needs.
the top 3 things you can do
So here are the top 3 things you can do to get comfortable with vulnerability.
- Introduce yourself to yourself
- Be the first to share
- Don’t try to solve it all
1. Introduce yourself to yourself
To be comfortable with vulnerability, you need to have a certain amount of self-awareness. You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and especially in the context of your team, you need to know what you do and don’t bring to the table.
Now if your level of distractability is anywhere near mine, you won’t have the patience to sit down for some naval gazing. One exercise you might try instead is writing an email introducing yourself in the third person. Let me explain.
Let’s pretend for a second that one of your team members, Sam, is up for promotion. They’re one of your favorites, a real top talent who can do it all. In a few weeks, Sam’s taking over as the team leader or manager of a team where you have a couple of close friends from way back. Now one of these friends reaches out to you to ask about their soon-to-be boss. They specifically ask you to provide an honest and complete description of this person. They’ve been burnt before, so they’d rather know everything – warts and all.
If you had to write an email, what would you include? It’s about one of your favorite team members, so surely you’d have no trouble listing all of their achievements, accomplishments, and amazing skills that qualify them to lead this team. But since you’re writing to a good friend, who asked for your help and honesty, you’d also include Sam’s limitations, pet peeves, and weaknesses. You might even suggest a few strategies to get on Sam’s good side.
So now pretend Sam is you. I challenge you to write an email about yourself to yourself. Take a good look in the mirror and honestly list all your strengths and weaknesses, skills and limitations, motivations and triggers that you bring to your team.
If you’re coming in as a new leader, I encourage you to play with open cards and share what you found in your introductory meeting. And even if it’s a team you’ve been leading for a while, if you feel that a change is necessary, there’s no better foundation for that than an honest and authentic self-assessment. And speaking of assessment, you might want to grab some of that feedback we talked about a few weeks ago, which as a side benefit, will demonstrate your commitment to your team’s psychological safety and maintaining a growth mindset. Yeah, it’s all connected.
Self-directed emails – or any other method that helps you focus on becoming more self-aware – can be used continuously. For example, let’s say you’ve recently led a project that didn’t deliver the expected results, or you had a discussion where you lost your cool. Rather than brushing off the experience, take the time to reflect on what went wrong and what you could have done differently. Were there any warning signs that you ignored? Were there any areas where your lack of expertise became apparent? By being honest with yourself about your shortcomings, you can better understand how to improve in the future.
And by being honest with others, you can create an environment where others feel safe to do the same. Which brings me to my second point: be the first to share.
2. Be the first to share
We’ve touched on this before, and I’m sure it’ll come up again and again: you lead by example. As a leader, your behavior sets the tone for your team; you show rather than tell what you think is wrong and what is right, what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
By being the first to share, you’re not only opening up about your weaknesses or mistakes but implicitly telling your team that it’s ok to do so.
When you’re open about your vulnerabilities and share your own struggles, it fosters a culture of trust and collaboration, where your team members are more likely to be honest with you and each other. They can ask for help, support one another and work together to overcome challenges.
If in the back of your mind, you’re thinking about how you can be more intentional about this, how you should add this to your routine, it’s surprisingly easy. All you need to do is to be honest and open, and share your experiences and thoughts with your team.
For example, those self-directed emails we were just talking about? Feel free to add their content to your team meetings or even set up so-called post-mortem meetings where you and your team can review together what went wrong. But be the first to share, to admit to your mistakes, and take ownership of their resolution.
Suppose there’s currently nothing you can share. It happens. In that case, one thing I did to start the conversation and lure one of my teams out of their protective shells was to do a retrospective and ask everyone to submit such stories anonymously. This way, we could talk about lessons learned without anyone feeling that all eyes were on them. It didn’t take more than a few months before people started to volunteer their identities because they wanted to add details to their stories, and they felt relaxed. They understood that the only purpose of the exercise was to learn from our mistakes and to support each other.
Something you can do on a daily basis is to admit when you don’t have all the answers. For example, you might confess that you have no idea about the best way to approach a particular client or project. By being open about your uncertainties, you provide your team with the opportunity to step in and offer their solution, ultimately leading to a more informed decision.
Let go of the burden of having it all figured out. Allow yourself not to know things. You’ll be surprised to see how many people in your team are willing to step up if you’re willing to take a step back. Doing so shows your team that it’s ok to be vulnerable and empowers them to contribute their unique perspectives and skills.
Which brings me to my third point: don’t try to solve it all.
3. Don’t try to solve it all
We talked a lot about what you can and should be doing, but there are some parts of this topic where it helps to do less.
Becoming comfortable with vulnerability is not just about sharing your own weaknesses; it’s also about understanding and empathizing with the vulnerabilities of others. Another aspect of fostering an environment that is receptive and accepting of vulnerability is honing your active listening skills and, if needed, developing your emotional intelligence.
When team members share their concerns or struggles, listen carefully and without judgment. Validate their feelings and show empathy by expressing your understanding and support. For example, if a team member struggles with a complicated project or feels overwhelmed by their workload, don’t try to immediately offer solutions. Don’t try to solve it all. Instead, listen to what they say and empathize with their situation. Acknowledge the challenges they’re facing and offer your support and understanding. Let them be vulnerable.
If this is something that you do naturally, you might think this is common sense, but for some, it can be more difficult than it sounds. Especially if you became the leader of your own team because you were really good at what your team members are doing. When someone comes up to you with a problem and halfway through the explanation, you already know what to do or who they need to talk to… it can be challenging not to jump to solutions. That’s where adopting a coaching leadership style can help you.
But before we go there, let’s do a quick recap.
Recap
We discussed how vulnerability plays a crucial role in building trust and fostering strong connections within your team. By embracing self-awareness, leading by example, and practicing empathy, you can create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their experiences and working together. In turn, this will make you a more effective and impactful leader.
It’s no accident that we tackled this topic right after discussing how to adopt and maintain a growth mindset. If allowing yourself to be vulnerable in front of your team is not something you’re used to, it can be intimidatingly out of your comfort zone. But just like with any other new thing you try, this will also become easier every time you do it. You just have to do it.
If it’s any motivation: it’s the single most liberating experience to realize that your team doesn’t need a perfect superhero, allowing yourself to be human and allowing yourself to build deep, trusting relationships with your fellow humans.
What’s next?
Ok, so what’s next? Where do we go from here?
As I mentioned just a minute ago, one thing that can help with letting go, with stopping yourself from being the number one problem solver in the team, is adopting a coaching leadership style.
This is what I’d like to discuss with you next time.
If you’re interested, make sure you hit subscribe and share this episode if you think it would benefit someone you know.
Thanks for listening; I’m truly grateful for your time and attention.
Talk to you soon.