Vulnerability
Why what worked in the past isn’t going to work anymore.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 177: Vulnerability
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week, I’m going to talk about one of the driving forces affecting modern creative leadership. Vulnerability. And the journey that some of the world’s most creative and innovative leaders are taking to bring all of themselves to their roles.
Let’s start the journey here.
Successful, effective leadership is about managing tension.
Instinctively, I suspect that for many of you, that statement resonated both intellectually and physiologically. You felt it as well as understood it.
There’s the tension to deliver results, versus the resources you get to deliver them with, and the time you get to deliver them in. That tension has been added to massively by The Great Resignation.
There’s the tension to create an environment that encourages original thinking and innovation versus the demands for predictable business performance. That tension has been amplified by the complete upheaval of the employer-employee relationship and the growing question of who’s working for who.
There’s the tension of building a business to meet the needs of a future that used to be uncertain but which now contains possibilities that seem to have no limitations.
There’s the tension of the expectations of the role itself versus the view we have of ourselves, and the questions and doubts that most human beings carry with them about their own abilities, about their place in the world, and often about their self-worth.
And finally there’s the tension of having power versus giving it away.
Most leaders operate from the belief that power is a zero-sum game. Give it away and it will be taken by someone else, never to return.
But, creativity is a different kind of power. The power to make people see and feel and act differently. The power to change the world. And unlocking it requires giving away control. Because the best leaders know that creativity comes from everywhere and everyone.
This is Jonathan Mildenhall, the Co-Founder & Chair of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand, in Episode 77.
“Everybody is creative. I fundamentally believe that, and I feel that as a leader of a company, it is your job to create the environment that everybody's way of expressing their creativity is welcomed. I think that it becomes too brutal a debate when people believe that creativity is the remit of a few people in an organization, and not the responsibility of everybody in an organization.”
Welcoming the input of others is an act of vulnerability.
And vulnerability leaves a lasting mark. It draws people to you. And that is the first requirement of leadership.
But vulnerability is not a switch that most of us have at our disposal. In the beginning, it’s frightening to be vulnerable. Which is why it’s not surprising that the reaction of many leaders is to step forward and take charge as opposed to being vulnerable. That instinct to take charge runs deep in the bedrock of traditional leadership.
But the reality is that, in today’s world, that approach doesn’t work for very long before talented people decide they’re looking for something else.
And what they’re looking for is a connection with the person they work for.
They want to believe that you care about them. That you trust them and that they can trust you. That you understand what they’re going through because you’re going through it too. And that you are willing to be vulnerable enough to show them all of that.
That’s when they come up with risky ideas, unimaginable ideas that scare you in the very best ways. Ideas that change the trajectory of your company and your business.
That kind of human investment happens when the people that work for you see you not as a source of power but as a source of hope.
So how do you, as the architect of the business, create an environment that allows you to be vulnerable? What are the foundations on which you must build?
In my experience, the first pillar is empathy. And the second pillar is trust. Let’s start with empathy.
Our society is changing in real time. Building company cultures that don’t just acknowledge differences but welcome and embrace diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives, is fundamental to unlocking creativity and innovation.
In that environment, can you be successful as a leader without displaying empathy? Keesha Jean-Baptiste, the Chief Talent Officer at Hearst Magazines doesn’t think so. This is what she said to me in Episode 327.
Charles:
Can you be a successful leader these days of innovative, creatively driven businesses without bringing empathy to the table?
Keesha Jean-Baptiste:
I think when you're talking about sustainable leadership, when you're talking about leaders that can excel in today's climate, I don't think that you can get away with not bringing empathy into the mix. I believe that people across generations are saying, "No. No more. We're not detached." The people we are at home and work, our values and our moral compass, our way of thinking, intellect, EQ, that all these things are connected now, and are expanding our definition of success.
Keesha’s belief that the definitions of leadership are being redefined is true everywhere I look and is happening faster than many leaders are aware of.
The idea of leading with empathy is not a new concept. But the fact that leaders are now being measured based on whether they are, in fact, truly empathetic, is a new reality.
Do you care about your employees, I mean, genuinely care? In today’s society, the evidence of that will quickly show up in how long they stick around and whether they invest themselves emotionally in your company. And if they don’t invest themselves emotionally, the work they do for you is not likely to be very rich in creative thinking or innovation. And then what do you have? At best - a parity business in a world in which parity means you’re losing.
So, empathy is the first pillar of a culture that encourages vulnerability. It’s the emotional currency that opens the door to trust.
But trust is a hesitant guest. And if you want it to stick around, you have to create the conditions in which it can thrive.
Julia Goldin, the Chief Product & Marketing Officer at The LEGO Group, talked to me about how she builds trust in Episode 326.
Charles:
It feels to me that trust is really central to everything that we're talking about, both in terms of the relationship you've got with your consumers, in terms of the environment you’re creating for people internally. How do you go about engendering trust?
Julia Goldin:
Transparency, openness, honesty, delivering on what we say. I think that's really important. Psychological safety is super important. Ensuring that people can feel comfortable. That there is no negative consequences of being open and honest about things. I think those are very important elements.
And then I think, at the end of the day, I think a lot of trust also comes from building relationships and continuously delivering on what you've promised. You know, it’s a formula in some ways between your personal credibility, your openness and honesty and sort of belief and the respect for each other, and just a level of intimacy, a level of connection.
So, with my team, I spend a lot of time with them and I'm very open with them, and I also believe you need to know each other as human beings and trust is built over time. And being able to go through difficult experiences together and have each other's back. And if mistakes are being made or if you are feeling threatened, to be able to kind of talk about that.
So I try to instill that sort of openness and I try to help people to learn as much as possible about each other because I believe that those are really important elements in getting to know each other and starting to build a relationship. Trust is not something that I think you can just sort of say, "Okay, now we're going to have trust in the organization." It's work. It's an emotional connection that you have to people. It's also experience and being able to see that people do what they say, what they promise. So I try to really hold that up.
So if you begin with empathy and consciously work to build trust, you’ll start to find that you’re creating an environment in which your own vulnerability becomes more instinctive. And once that happens, then others respond.
Greg Lyons, the CMO of Pepsi North America, has experienced it this way.
Charles:
How do you create an environment from a leadership standpoint where they're willing to be that vulnerable to you? Obviously your vulnerability is an important part of that, but there's a thing about being vulnerable when you're the leader, right, that can feel a little incongruous.
Greg Lyons:
Yeah. It's got to start with me. If I'm not vulnerable, no one else will feel comfortable doing that. Then it goes down to my leadership team and some are more comfortable doing that than others, but I do feel, having gone through the pandemic, it's made people feel more comfortable doing that and being more vulnerable because everyone's going through something right now. Then, obviously, you need to behave appropriately when someone's vulnerable. Sometimes there's a fine line because people still need to deliver their jobs, right? You still need to hold people accountable for moving the business forward, and hitting the purpose goals, and the agenda that we have. But you also… I just find if you are truly human, and you truly show that you care, and you truly listen, it flows and more people start doing that.
Which, thanks to Greg, brings us back to tension. The tension between holding people accountable to the business and giving them room to be themselves.
For too long, the modern business world has been working under practices and expectations that were designed for the Industrial Age.
The pandemic has compressed about ten years of change into eighteen months, and is leaving behind a world in which the old rules no longer apply and the new ones have yet to be written.
The good news is that leaders - leaders by behavior and not simply by title - have never been more valuable or sought after.
Today, as a leader, you have immense opportunity to affect business outcomes and, even more importantly, to change people’s lives. You are living in a moment in which you can create the expectations for how a company should work for generations to come.
The irony is that in order to activate it, you’re going to have to create the conditions in which your own humanity has never been more evident or available to others. In which you recognize your own vulnerability not as a weakness but as a strength.
Leadership of ourselves. For once, the buck really does stop here.
Thanks for listening.
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