Nobody Believes You: The Role of Vulnerability in Leadership S5 EP9

In the penultimate episode of Season 5, Jenni talks all about the role of vulnerability in credible leadership. She discusses its significance during the pandemic, defines what it means to be vulnerable for leaders, and highlights the potential disconnect and chaos when leaders fail to show vulnerability. 

Jenni shares personal stories and outlines three practical steps to build vulnerability: asking for help, being honest, and leveraging all aspects of communication. The episode emphasises the need for leaders to demonstrate personal, yet professional aspects of themselves to strengthen connections with their teams.

Episode Timestamps:

There is a balance to vulnerability. And for some leaders, it can feel like you’re having to expose too much. But, what we can think about and what I often talk about with leaders, is that to create connection, you need to be personal, but not intimate. That is the distinction to make. – Jenni Field

Key Takeaways From This Episode:

Important Links & Mentions: 

Transcript for this podcast

Welcome to this episode of Redefining Comms with me Jenni Field. Today, I’m going to be talking about vulnerability in credible leadership. Now, this is one of the core traits that people were asking leaders to show during the pandemic and it was one of the core reasons for my research into exploring leadership further. So, I’m really excited to get into the topic of vulnerability and in this episode I’ll share with you the definition that I use, the chaos that happens when you don’t have it and I’ll share some stories from my own work and then we’ll go into three things that you can do to build the practice of vulnerability.

What does it mean to be vulnerable?

Well, when I was speaking at an event about how to build better relationships with leaders, someone asked me how can I get my leaders to be more vulnerable, and it’s a question that is asked a lot, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, but true vulnerability actually takes an impressive amount of strength and assuredness. 

To be vulnerable is to be able to admit when you’re wrong. You would recognise your own culpability and have open and real conversations with your team, connecting on a level that is really genuine and open. But being vulnerable can be uncomfortable, and as a word it’s a little bit meaningless. You know, be more human, show more of your authentic self, show more vulnerability. They’re all phrases that are thrown at leaders every day without real, without any real explanation about what it actually means.

But in reality, being vulnerable is what allows us to simply connect with others. So when I was asked that question about how to make leaders more vulnerable my answer was really have you explored what vulnerability means to them?

Because it means different things to different people, and it can also make people very uncomfortable. So we have to explore what vulnerability means to us individually, and as a leader that’s something to go away and think about. 

What is the chaos that happens if you’re not vulnerable? 

Well, when we don’t show vulnerability, those we lead will just disconnect from us. That disconnection has a huge impact on our relationships at work because without a connection, any relationship is going to struggle. And I said earlier that being vulnerable is what really allows us to connect with others. So that’s what we’re really focusing on.

But there is a balance to vulnerability, and for some leaders it can feel like you’re having to expose too much. But what we can think about, and what I often talk about with leaders, is that to create connection you need to be personal but not intimate. And that is the distinction to make. 

Now, for me vulnerability is fairly straightforward, but for some people that I have worked with they have said I don’t know why I need to share anything about who I am outside of work when I’m at work. You know, but who you are is who you are, and sharing something about you as a whole person, not just the role that you’re in, can make a difference to connection. And that’s what we’re trying to uncover. That’s what we’re trying to create. 

Now recently I was facilitating and hosting a leadership conference and the CEO was doing the opening segment of the two-day event and I hadn’t met them. We hadn’t had chance to have a conversation the communications team internally with we’re doing all of the content, but I wanted to make sure that I could build a connection with the CEO when I arrived. 

So, I asked the team a bit more about them, you know, what do we know about them outside of work, and they didn’t have too much to say. They had a you know one or two things but nothing really that would tell me a huge amount about the person that was the CEO and that’s what I was trying to get from them.

Now, I don’t know if they didn’t know that much because this particular CEO didn’t want to share anything, but whatever it was that was driving that lack of knowledge was clearly having an impact on the relationships and on the connection between people. That relationship and that depth of that relationship. And that’s what can happen if you’re not able to demonstrate some aspects of vulnerability.

But we have to be clear about what it is and what it isn’t for leaders because being honest, open and courageous is one thing, but using vulnerability as a reason to overshare sometimes for validation or in an attempt at connection will have the opposite impact on followership.

So, there’s a really fine line to trade here, and being able to understand where your comfort level is with vulnerability and what you’re trying to share and why are all very important things to start to think about. 

How do we build it? How do we build vulnerability? 

Well, there are three things that we can do, and all of this will depend sometimes on the culture that you operate in. There’ll be some leaders in some parts of the world that will never do some of these things because it’s just culturally not the thing to do. It’s not appropriate, and it’s not the right thing for someone in a leadership position.

So, it’s really important to look at this and then maybe look at it with the lens of cultural intelligence, especially if you’re working in a global organisation. And I’ll pop a link in the show notes to a great book on cultural intelligence, if you want to have a read on that as well. 

1. Asking for help.

And for some people that’s something that we will never do, but in a lot of the world this is something that can go a really long way, because sometimes we think as a leader we have to have all the answers, but we have to make sure that sometimes we’re okay if we don’t.

And that’s not about standing in a room full of people and saying, “I need some help,” and showing your vulnerability in that way. It’s just maybe asking in a meeting for someone to help with some background information, or to bring something else forward to contribute to a project. 

It doesn’t need to be help for you to achieve something. It might be help for the project to continue, or the particular strategy that you’re looking at, whatever it might be. What I’m trying to say here is that you don’t have to have all the answers, so asking those questions and asking for that help can often be a way of showing that you don’t know it all, and that can sometimes be quite a nice place to be for people that might have you on a bit of a pedestal, or might think that you do have all the answers.

2. Being honest. 

Now, having a script can work really, really well. I’ve worked with leaders who like bullet points, I’ve worked with leaders that have a full script. It’s always different. But what people are asking for more and more is a bit more flexibility, a bit more kind of ask me anything sessions, Q&A sessions, those sorts of things where it’s going to feel like it’s much more relaxed, and it’s much more open, and it’s much more honest. Because if somebody asks you a question and you don’t know the answers, it’s okay to say, oh I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m going to ask so and so, and they’ll be able to come back to you.

What we hear a lot of is that we gloss over Q&A. People don’t want to ask questions, so this is a really big part of being able to build it. If you want to build that vulnerability, having something like a Q&A session or an ask me anything, it’s a really good way to do that, and you can prepare for that fully, without feeling like you’re going in without any kind of support. 

3. Use every aspect of communication. 

So it’s thinking about all of those little things that communicate something. I remember working with a leadership team many years ago, where we were doing some organisational change. We had a new CEO, a new CFO, and we had a big conference, and I remember working with the CEO and the CFO to talk about how we might show up on that day. 

You know, we’re talking to people that are more frontline workers. Do we want to be in a suit and tie? Is that appropriate? Should we maybe relax things a bit? And we talked about every aspect of communication. We talked about, you know, shirts, ties, jeans, all the different things. We talked about the lighting on the stage, the images that were being used, how much text there was, all of the things, everything that we could think of that was communicating something. So how you behave, what you wear, all of those things are communicating something. One of the tricks I often talk about to show a bit more vulnerability in a way that can feel quite comfortable for everybody is using your out-of-office email message.

There’s real opportunities here to say what you’re doing that show a bit more about you that will enable connection. And that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to find opportunities for you to make a connection with the people that you lead. And that’s the focus when it comes to vulnerability.

Thank you for listening!

Now, if you’d like to find out more about the research or take our online Credibility Gap Assessment or find out more about the book, you can access all of that information in the link in the show notes.

Now, in the next episode, I’ll be sharing a bit of a summary around the eight practices, the behaviours you might see in yourself if you’re lacking the practice, but also where your mindset needs to be if you want to get to the place of credible leadership.

So, thank you for listening. And if you haven’t already, please do join my community by subscribing to my mailing list. All of the details are available in the show notes.