Should we be vulnerable at work? And in what way? The average person spends the lion’s share of their waking hours at work. So it is normal that we all want to be in organizations where we feel at home. We certainly don’t want to have to worry about dysfunction and unnecessary politics.
The fact of the matter is that, unfortunately, more often than not, dysfunction and politics are “just the way things are” in many organizations.
A culture of openness and vulnerability. We hear about it a lot, and to be honest, we can think of it as soft and a waste of time. It distracts us from getting real work done.
Or does it?
A culture of openness and vulnerability is beneficial to both the organization and its employees: employees are more engaged, teams are more effective, and turnover is lower. Vulnerability helps eradicate dysfunction and politics at their roots.
How does a leader create a culture of openness? Are benefits guaranteed?
The benefits
We have all been there. There’s an issue in your team and you wonder endlessly about whether or not you should say something, what the possible implications are. Many times, we decide to say nothing, yet we know deep down how much better it would be for everyone. But we hold back.
This is what an unhealthy organization looks like. Situations like this can cause low morale, plummeting productivity and eventually cause the best people to leave. After all, if I am distracted by the thought of whether or not I should say something, knowing full well that it may help, how am I going to be able to focus and be happy with what I am doing?
Many times, it boils down to a misunderstanding because we human beings, while the same in dignity, are also all different because our history can condition the way we see ourselves and the world around us.
You are about to start your weekly team meeting and Sarah seems to be a lot quieter than she usually is.
You can cut it with a knife. Everybody notices the absence of Sarah’s bubbly personality. So you call her out on it. After a moment of discomfort, Sarah starts. Looking over at her colleague, John, she says, “John, look, I felt slighted toward the end of last week’s meeting when you looked at your watch and rolled your eyes while I was speaking about what I was working on.”
John looks surprised and then he looks off into space, as you gather he is thinking back to last week’s meeting and playing back the events in his head. “Ahhhh!” he says. “I know what that was.” He begins to laugh a little bit, and you see that Sarah is getting visibly annoyed. Before she can explode, John explains, “I wasn’t rolling my eyes at you at all! You see, I have this smartwatch, and I get my text messages on it too. My grandmother was texting me, and she is not too good with this smartphone stuff. Her message came out all garbled so each time I get one I need to clarify with her what she is trying to say. And I get several of these a day!”
In this fictitious, yet not totally unbelievable situation, Sarah’s vulnerability (opening up and telling John about what was going on inside of her) helped ease the tension and prevented things from getting blown our of proportion.
Sarah did the right thing, and this is the way we should approach these situations as well! When this doesn’t happen, typically what does happen is that we bottle it up inside of us, or we tell others our version of the events. When situations like these go unresolved, they compound over time, and we begin to draw our own conclusions, which aren’t even based on reality!
When there is enough trust that you can actually open things up for conversation, we avoid so many misunderstandings, such as this one. Just like any relationship, teamwork requires good information. The stakes are too high to just let things go: morale and engagement suffer and your best people can leave.
This is anything but soft.
How do you build trust?
First things first. It needs to start with you, the leader. People look to the leader to see how they will act, and they follow suit. So if you make a mistake, or someone calls you out on something, you need to be vulnerable, human, and real. After all, you are human, and the truth about the situation is what it is!
After all, many times the truth does find its way out, and when it does, it looks much worse. You lose credibility, and when you lose credibility productivity and morale will definitely go down, and that is never good if you want good results.
It’s understandable. Many times leaders think that they lose face if they are vulnerable. The fact of the matter is that they don’t. In fact, their credibility goes up.
Think about this for a second. If you are buying something, you want to know exactly how it is, right? You don’t want any unpleasant surprises. If there are any unexpected defects, you are not happy, and in your mind, the reputation of that product goes down. If you know ahead of time that there are defects, it doesn’t bother you, because you know it upfront.
I know this is an analogy, and analogies aren’t perfect. But you get the idea. If you pretend to be superhuman, when you slip up, people will eventually find out. And trying to cover it up or excuse it (because you are superhuman) will make things more dysfunctional.
Obviously, if you are making huge mistakes every day, that’s one thing. But when we all look inside, we know that we are not perfect, so we don’t have to pretend to be!
When the people you lead see that you show that it is okay to be vulnerable and human, they will do the same. And you reinforce that by showing them that it’s okay if they make mistakes too.
All of a sudden you will have a culture where people can be people, and the dysfunction you thought would be around forever at toxic levels will be reduced to a minimum.
And it takes a lot less time than if you were to spend it on navigating tiring politics.
Are benefits guaranteed?
The short answer to this is “yes.” But the pivotal condition is that it has to start with you as the leader. And it has to continue with you as the leader. Because trust is like yeast in the dough, it will permeate everything you do.
When there is trust, you can have healthy debate as a team, because everyone knows that everyone is on the same team looking for the best answer. When that happens, you can expect people to commit to decisions, because everyone has had a chance to have their say.
With commitment to clear actions, you can actually hold each other accountable. Have you ever tried to hold someone accountable for their share when there is bad blood due to unresolved conflict? It is toxic!
So we can safely say that trust connects to results. Trust is not soft, fluffy and out of touch with reality. Trust leads to results.
If you want this for your team, I am here to help you do just that.
