There’s a thing that many speakers do before going on stage. And it’s a killer for their development as speakers.
It feels really natural. Dare I say, authentic. But it’s insidious.
What is it?
Before they do the talk, they tell everyone who cares to listen how nervous they are.
Why do they do it? Two reasons mostly, though they’ll never admit it. First, to provide an excuse up front in case it goes badly. Second, to get some sympathy.
What’s the outcome? Whether their talk is great or a shocker, the only feedback they’ll get is how good it was. How their nerves didn’t show, even if their shaking triggered a Richter 12 event. Which means they don’t grow, because they’ll never know in reality how good or bad they are, and their ability as speakers never improves.
By the way, for “they”, read “me” too. I also used to do this as a defence because I was always nervous, and it provided me with a ready excuse in case I screwed up.
Then someone who gave a damn told me I’d never get honest feedback that way. So I stopped doing it.
Which means that if you don’t want honest feedback, then make sure everyone knows how nervous you are before you go up.
Why do I bring it up here? Because it’s the same with leadership and vulnerability. The more “vulnerable” you are, the less likely you are to hear honestly how well you’re leading.
Until of course the organisation you’re leading starts to fall apart as it has no clue where it’s going, and feels hopelessly at the mercy of events around it. And people leave, and you lose customers. But no one told you before, because they didn’t want to hurt you.
So the question is, are you leading for outcomes or for pity?
This may sound like I’m an anti-vulnerabilist (coined it here – watch out for it in the Oxford Dictionary list of new words doing the rounds!). But far from it.
An anti-vulnerability that has you standing in front of your team claiming that you can never be wrong, that you always have the answers, that you cannot be challenged, that you have the world’s most beautiful spouse, are the fittest person this side of the Hebrides and a full head of hair (sorry – oversharing) is the height of arrogance, self-delusion or insecurity. Leadership as it was practiced in the days of Papal Infallibility simply doesn’t work today (though, and there is nuance here, on some rare occasions, you may need to temporarily go that way).
And it makes you sound like a personification of everyone’s Instagram / Facebook account with their perfect lives.
But when I read LinkedIn, Fortune and other popular business media, many writers imply that vulnerability can provide a shelter for weakness in leadership. And popularisation of the concept in much of business culture, especially for new leaders growing up in that environment, tends to take it in that direction. Ironic as the doyenne of vulnerability, Brene Brown, certainly doesn’t equate vulnerability to weakness. Far from it.
No, the reality is that you do have to be comfortable in showing some aspects of your vulnerability – you are human – but you actually need to be selective about where and when. That doesn’t mean you’re inauthentic (next week’s newsletter is on that topic), but it does mean that you need to prioritise the team and company’s ability to achieve its purpose above your own comfort.
Welcome to leadership.
## How this relates to your responsibilities as leader
In last week’s newsletter, I highlighted some of the key responsibilities of leadership. Being over-vulnerable will make many of these harder, and some impossible. One of the core challenges of leadership is dealing with uncertainty. But dealing with that uncertainty, finding a way through it, is your responsibility. You need to create enough certainty for your team to move forward.
And sometimes, that means you need to act with more certainty than you have. Or, to be exact, to appear more certain than you are.
This surfaces most when it comes to decisions and to direction. At the **highest levels**, both of these have to come from you. Not in an autocratic way, unless a particular situation demands it, but it does still need to come from you.
Don’t let your not having an answer stray to not having a way to get to an answer. You cannot leave the team feeling exposed, rudderless and hopeless.
If you’re not sure, the best thing to do in most circumstances is to fess up that you’re not sure (the vulnerable bit). But, and this is really important, very quickly follow up with a plan as to how to get to a decision. That may include talking to the experts you employ, or workshops with the team, or seeking external advice. You will likely need to act less like leader-as-dictator, and more like leader-as-facilitator.
There are many ways to get there. But the team needs to feel that you have a way to get there, or you’ll create a number of challenging outcomes. Like f’rinstance…
… The team will feel directionless. Which means you’ll go nowhere fast. Or just as bad, you’ll go to lots of incoherent and random places superfast.
… Your team will also lose belief. Without belief, your won’t make something happen. If the team feels that you neither have a clue, nor how to get out of cluelessness, then they’ll lose belief. This is especially true when it’s hardest for you – when the tunnel is dark, the team will look to you, and the last thing you should be doing is amplifying the darkness.
{This was spectacularly visible during the initial periods of the COVID-19 pandemic. In moments of huge uncertainty and volatility, people looked to leadership for guidance and direction. The paradox, of course, is that those leaders themselves are operating in more uncertainty and they’ve ever faced. But that was not the time to dig deep into their vulnerability – it was the time to admit that like everyone else, they had no clue how it would turn out, but to have the efficacy and resourcefulness to guide their teams to figure it out.
The best leaders shone a light, even though the tunnel was unpredictably long.}
… Where the decisions have significant impact, and at your level most of the decisions should have significant impact within the company, then the decision will be taken out of your hands and be dictated by an external party, or the circumstance around you, or whomever happens to be most vocal in the company, or randomness.
… Culturally, you’ll be modelling to your team how to be a victim of circumstance. Without the proactivity and resourcefulness that comes from having a way to figure things out, again the organisation will be mediocre at best, and unlikely to survive challenges. You decide through your behaviour whether you create a culture of being at the behest of circumstances and challenge, or one that proactively faces them and creates value and positivity even when the odds are against you.
This is the hardest part of leadership, and the one that your team as they become more senior will struggle with the most. The need to create decision when there’s increasing uncertainty.
And by definition, the more senior you are, the more uncertainty you need to deal with. No more so than if you’re a founder CEO.
So don’t be tempted to use “vulnerability” as a crutch or excuse to not make the hard decisions. Use it as empowerment to work with whomever you need to in order to get to that decision.
Accept that you’ll get some decisions wrong (again, a useful vulnerability), and grow, learn and develop your decision-making and direction-forming prowess through them.
Don’t allow vulnerability to be an excuse for the abrogation of responsibility. Everyone needs agency, and in the best companies, everyone has that agency. And it culminates in you as founder CEO with the attitude of extreme ownership.
But you chose to lead! You have to accept these possibilities and what they mean to you as an individual.
There’s a deeper challenge though. What if not betraying that vulnerability means that you have to be someone else? Not be authentic?
Well, we need to look hard at the concept of authenticity.
Which we will in next week’s newsletter…
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