Written by Giorgio Genaus.
As a leader, it can be easy to think that the best approach to leading your team is by being strong, insistent and showing that you always have certainty. While these qualities are helpful for the people that you lead, the reality might look a little different.
The Old Way of Leading
When we think of leaders, we usually imagine someone who has confidence in every decision they make, has unwavering certainty and is willing to push through every difficulty and challenge that arises.
We also imagine them having no personal issues, nothing setting them back and that they never lose heart in the depths of challenge. Think of the polished character Harvey Specter from the drama series Suits.
That type of leadership may have worked in the past, culturally we’re on the doorstep of a lot of business and leadership changes. One of those changes is moving from having a hard style of leadership to a new kind of human leadership.
The 21st Century Leader
Today more than ever, honesty and transparency are valued in the workplace. Especially when in the throws of difficulty and adversity.
As a leader, you might think to yourself that you need to hide all of the difficulties and challenges you’re facing in the business as a way to protect your team from knowing everything that is challenging. But what if keeping them in the dark about what you’re wrestling with is actually setting them up for confusion?
Think about how many times you’ve been left to make assumptions about someone or a situation because you didn’t have enough information. That’s when your imagination kicks in and colors the image with all kinds of wild imaginations and personal issues being projected onto the matter.
The issue with not showing your vulnerable and honest side is that you leave your team to make assumptions, leaving them guessing and coloring the situation with their own brushes of personal stories.
Be Yourself
It’s important to be yourself instead of trying to be someone that you’re not. We all inherently have an honesty radar that goes off whenever someone is not telling us the truth. Those alarms go crazy when our leaders are trying to spin a story or sugarcoat a difficult issue.
What your team want from you is honesty and transparency. They want to see a human being lead them. This makes you more relatable and easier to connect with. For example, in the Marvel film, Iron Man 3, Tony Stark experienced deep fears and panic attacks, which showed a vulnerable side to this flawless superhero. It made his character much more relatable to audiences because it demonstrated a human side that we all share.
Be willing to be vulnerable
It’s common for leaders to have moments of doubt, confusion, and worry. It’s equally common for leaders to hide these feelings from their teams.
When I encourage my clients to lead with this vulnerability, their team step up to the plate and tackle the challenges alongside their leader.
In one particular case, I was working with one of my clients who is the CEO of a growing business. He was facing several challenges in his personal life, and it was affecting how he was showing up in the business and how he was leading his executive team. After working through the underlying issues he was wrestling with, I suggested that he share it with his team so they could get a clearer picture of why he wasn’t delivering his best.
They immediately responded with empathy, understanding and most importantly, respect. What followed was inspiring. The team stepped up and took on extra work with more enthusiasm while my client sorted through his personal life. His personal challenges brought the team together and formed a closer bond. Their productivity had grown and so had the inspiration in the company. This resulted in them having the biggest month in sales in the following month.
What does leading with vulnerability look like in actuality?
When you’re experiencing concerns and worries about a project it’s valuable to express these worries to your team. Share your concerns and your thoughts with them. Communicate that you don’t want to burden them with the worry but that you’re sharing these concerns with them to see if they have any ideas or solutions to the problem.
Doing this does two things:
- You’ll earn their respect. While you might feel that being vulnerable will lose their respect, the reality is that they’ll appreciate your honesty and transparency so much that they’ll only respect you more.
- It gives them a sense of inclusion. People want to feel valuable and useful. By sharing your concerns and worries with the people you’re working with, they’ll feel included and trusted by you. This will inspire them to help you solve the problem together.
We’re living in a day in age when people appreciate and respect vulnerability and the human side of work. Too often we get caught in the trap of doing things the old way because it was the old way of doing things but in reality, being a vulnerable human, experiencing your fears and communicating them only shows how much true strength you have.
Leadership is not about pretending that you’re superhuman. Authentic leadership is about being a human being. Nothing earns respect from others more than that.
About the Author:
Giorgio Genaus is a highly committed coach with a great deal of experience and expertise as a teacher, author, coach to leaders, and writer. His unique perspective on career and life, in general, has allowed him to help people find meaning and fulfilment through mindset-mastery. With a distinct voice, he is able to engage and create high-calibre quality content that entices readers with insightful and research-backed techniques from a variety of powerful approaches.
With over a decade of experience in the field, he gained authority on the topics of mindset, coaching, and business development. Over the course of the year, he was able to successfully publish bestselling mindset books.
One of his latest books is “How To Do Life: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Challenges and Understanding the World Around you”.
