Leading with Vulnerability

For years, people have felt the need to “shut off” or conceal their emotions in the workplace. More recently, we’ve started to recognize the important role emotions can play in our organizations. Effective leaders tune into the emotions of their employees to provide support, motivate teams, and create deeper connections between individuals. A substantial number of studies have proven that humans are in fact social creatures who crave relationships and connections with other human beings.

Vulnerability and Teamwork

It’s no surprise that technology has greatly changed the way we work and grow our organizations. Technology is largely responsible for increasing the speed at which individuals, teams, and organizations are expected to perform and grow. There is substantial pressure on workers to learn new skills, generate new innovative and creative products and services, and collaborate to solve complicated problems. To be creative and innovative requires individuals to take risks and an environment where ideas are openly shared and accepted.

Why Do We Avoid Vulnerability?

Reflect for a moment on the media you consume, the people you admire, and the apps you spend time using. As adults, we are spending more time than ever examining other people’s lives, striving for success, and seeking the attention and approval of people we may not even know. We are often viewing a highlight reel of other people’s best moments and greatest successes without taking into account the amount of effort and failure experienced to get to that point.

Be An Owner

High-performing organizations want to fill their employee ranks with owners and effective leaders seek to recruit employees who exhibit ownership, while at the same time strategically developing ownership in current employees. Fortunately, there are several leader best practices that can be acquired and developed that result in increased capacity of leaders to find, hire, and retain owners within their organizational ranks.