Vulnerability: My leadership superpower
“Your productivity is low”
I was giving feedback to a member of my team. “Your productivity is low. I’d like you to focus on increasing your output.”
“Um, okay. Yes, I can do that”, they carefully replied. “Can you tell me a little more about why you think it’s low? How do I know whether I’m productive enough?”
The truth is... I hadn’t thought it through very clearly. I know how to give proper feedback, but this time I had gotten a bit too comfortable and I was winging it.
I searched for a response. “You know, I don’t have anything specific, but I’ve managed a lot of people and I have a general sense of productivity... and you’re just not there.”
Ouch. Are you cringing? I’m cringing. How would you feel if you were on the receiving end of this? You might feel a bit helpless. That your boss is unhappy with you and is setting an arbitrary, invisible bar that you have to somehow meet. This is not the type of feeling I want someone on my team to have.
I interact with my team every day. Not every interaction goes perfectly and over time the effects of poor interactions accumulate. Each one reinforces a belief, potentially poisoning relationships.
An Internal Battle
This is not how I wanted this conversation to go. Within my body, an internal battle raged. Half of me, panicked, wanted to double down. ”You can’t back down now!”, it said. The other half pushed back, “You can do it Jeff. Make things right.” I took a deep breath and swallowed my pride.
“You know, I really didn’t think this through very well and I wasn’t prepared. Sorry about that. Let me prepare something more specific for you and get back to you. For now, don’t worry about your productivity.”
How does this feel? A lot better right? I admitted that I messed up, I apologized, and I agreed to follow up. With a little bit of vulnerability, all that tension and negativity dissipated.
Doing the work
Afterwards, I did the work and came up with specific examples. A 1 hour task assigned last week was still incomplete a week later. Another project had been dragging on for weeks.
I listed the examples to my team member. Then, I dug into my vulnerability toolkit again. “You know, I’m not always productive either. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes I just don’t have the motivation. Let’s talk about what’s going on. Maybe I can help.”
Instead of me demanding better, the conversation became collaborative. We uncovered multiple issues. The design wasn’t done yet for the 1 hour task. There had been an increased number of requests, which kept interrupting progress. They needed to spend time learning an unfamiliar area of code.
This was a valuable conversation that only happened because I had been vulnerable. Instead of forcing my team member to work more or work harder we came up with better solutions. More communication about blockers. Batching and delegating incoming work. Asking more questions when learning unfamiliar areas.
That Damn Sentence
Weeks passed. Work was going well, but something was still bothering me. It was that damn sentence, the one where I had become defensive. The words still echoed in my head: “I’ve managed a lot of people” and “you’re just not there”. I was ashamed I had uttered those words.
It’s not easy to be vulnerable about your failings. The hardest part for me is to admit it to myself. I look in the mirror and the perfectionist in me yells, “What is wrong with you! You’re such a terrible person!”. Shame floods my body and I twist away from the mirror.
Slowly, I take a deep breath and I give myself a hug to protect me from that monster. I tell myself, I don’t need or want to be perfect. I want to try new things and fail at them. And when I fail I will own my mistakes.
Gathering my courage, I looked back at the mirror. Yes, I did say those words. And you know what? That’s okay. What’s not okay is pretending it didn’t happen. Do the right thing Jeff. Be vulnerable.
I brought it up in our next conversation. “I’m sorry for the way I initially reacted to your request for more specific feedback. What I said was unhelpful and disrespectful. I want you to know that I really appreciate you asking for clarity. Your questions led directly to a better result. Not only that, I’ve grown as a person because of you. Thank you.”
Grateful, my team member responded, “Thank you for saying that. I really appreciate it.”
Immediately I felt a peaceful energy wash over me. I was in alignment with my personal values. I had opened up and made it clear that while I do make mistakes I won’t just hand wave them away. I care about doing better and I appreciate transparent and open communication.
With this one conversation, I turned something negative into something powerful. I brought us closer together, a shared moment of mutual understanding and vulnerability. I faced my imperfection and instead of judging, I found a win-win that allows me to make mistakes AND make up for them.
Final thoughts
Vulnerability is not just admitting mistakes. A common pattern I see is that people will use fallibility as an excuse to ignore the problem and move on. True vulnerability is more than that. True vulnerability forces me to face my flaws instead of side stepping them. In this instance, I recognized that I was shutting down open communication between us. I realized that instead of attributing delays to a lack of productivity we could dissect the problem and work to solve it.
Vulnerability is not a one size fits all t-shirt. You can be too vulnerable and you can get hurt. Stay present and pay attention to understand the appropriate amount of vulnerability. It’s totally worth it. The right dose can do wonders for any relationship.
Mistakes happen. But I don’t fear them. Each mistake allows me to build trust and deeper relationships with my team. It’s an opportunity to show that I care and to hold myself accountable. An opportunity to do better. This is my leadership superpower.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jennifer Lin, Brenda Geary, Steven Klimek, Christin Chong, Gary Yuen, Yao Cheng, and Sharon Kam for reading my drafts and giving me feedback!