This episode explores the tension between confidence and vulnerability in leadership, showing when each serves you and when it can harm outcomes.
Confidence vs Vulnerability: How Much Should a Leader Show?
You're asking investors to back a plan you know is partly a best guess, or you're a few weeks into a new role and everyone's waiting for you to set direction in a business you've barely got to know. Kate and Maddie look at the pull between projecting confidence and being open about what you don't know yet: what each one does for you, what happens when you lean too far either way, and how to work out which end you tend to default to.
In this episode
- Why the most confident voice in the room tends to win the argument, even when it isn't the right one
- Overestimation, overplacement and overprecision: three kinds of overconfidence, and the signs you might be leaning on one of them
- A neurosurgeon who pairs complete certainty about what needs to happen with an open conversation about the options
- Process, outcome and emotional vulnerability, and why it's usually the emotional kind that makes leaders want the ground to swallow them
- When sharing how you feel helps your team, and when it hands them something heavy to carry
Try this: this week, pair confidence with vulnerability in the way you talk to your team. If you tend to lead with uncertainty, swap "I don't know if this will work" for something like "There are parts of this project I'm still working out, and I'm confident in our ability to figure them out together." If you tend to lead with certainty, try "I'm confident this is the right direction, and please tell me if there's anything else we should be thinking about." Notice which one felt harder to say, as that's probably a clue about which end of the spectrum you spend less time at.
Over to you Kate has said "overindex" so many times while planning this series that it's stopped sounding like a word. If you've got a better one, we'd love to hear it. Write to us at hello@latenightleadership.com.
Research and resources
- Jessica A. Kennedy, Cameron Anderson and Don A. Moore (2013), "When overconfidence is revealed to others: Testing the status-enhancement theory of overconfidence", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. The research behind the idea that confidence, even when it isn't justified, raises your status with peers. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d61t8rg
- Don A. Moore and Paul J. Healy (2008), "The trouble with overconfidence", Psychological Review. Where the three "overs" come from. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18426301/
- Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart (2021). Grounded confidence, humility, armouring, and "I'm here to get it right, not to be right", a line that came out of her Dare to Lead research. [ADD LINK]
- Brené Brown, "The power of vulnerability", TED talk (2010). Vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability
- Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (2013; second edition with Peter Schein, 2021). Asking questions as an act of vulnerability that builds trust, and a very thin book, if you want something to read next.
- Kevin Novak on three types of vulnerability in leadership: process, outcome and emotional. https://www.2040digital.com/change-and-transformation-leadership/leading-with-measured-vulnerability/
- Past episode: the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp), and being "above" or "below the line". Season 1, Episode 2: how-culture-is-shaped-leaders-founders
- Past episode: emotional contagion. Season 1, Episode 2: how-culture-is-shaped-leaders-founders
- Further reading: the idea that showing vulnerability after you've shown competence makes you more likeable is often traced to Elliot Aronson's "pratfall effect" research from the 1960s, though later studies have found the effect depends a lot on context.
Next episode 23rd October: Our embodied leadership special. The easiest way to find out what that is? Listen next time.
Enjoying the show? Follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and a rating or review makes a real difference to a small podcast like ours.
About your hosts Kate Nicholroy (Good Ideas Agency, https://www.goodideasagency.com) and Maddie Fox (MadFox Group, https://www.madfoxgroup.com) are coaches who work with senior leaders and their teams, and Late Night Leadership grew out of the conversations we kept having with them.
Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.
Late Night Leadership was formerly A Curious Space.
00:00 --> 00:02 Good evening, Kate. Good evening.
00:03 --> 00:06 What are we talking about tonight? Well, Maddie,
00:07 --> 00:10 today's episode is all about the polarity or the tension
00:11 --> 00:15 between confidence and vulnerability, which is something that we've
00:15 --> 00:18 both spotted comes up a lot in the conversations we're having with leaders.
00:19 --> 00:23 And I think it comes up in all sorts of guises, but one is maybe
00:24 --> 00:26 you're a leader and you're talking to your investors and you want them to give
00:27 --> 00:30 you more money to grow your company. Now, obviously,
00:30 --> 00:34 in that, you need to project confidence and help people
00:34 --> 00:36 feel like you know where you're going and what you're doing and what the plan
00:36 --> 00:39 is, and it's a good plan, and they should all get on board with it,
00:40 --> 00:43 and it's believable. And equally,
00:43 --> 00:47 every growing company has things that are not working quite right
00:47 --> 00:50 yet. Every plan is always a sort of best guess.
00:50 --> 00:53 You know, every strategy has an element of risk in it. So,
00:55 --> 00:57 You don't want to completely deny all of that,
00:58 --> 01:01 but equally, if you over-index on the
01:02 --> 01:06 uncertainty and the vulnerability in what you're saying, maybe your investors aren't
01:06 --> 01:10 going to be as convinced. What we want to do today
01:10 --> 01:14 is use some lenses to explore this polarity.
01:16 --> 01:20 Yeah, I think that's a great example. And another one we thought about was
01:20 --> 01:24 the new leader. So, when you join a business,
01:24 --> 01:28 your first 30, 60, 90 days, there can be
01:28 --> 01:32 some level of pressure, depending on your role, to project
01:33 --> 01:36 certainty, to be clear on decisions, to start
01:37 --> 01:41 leading on strategy. And it's a business that you've only known
01:41 --> 01:45 for a few weeks. The opposite of that, however, is perhaps
01:46 --> 01:49 taking too long To really get to grips with things
01:50 --> 01:53 and make some decisions, because inevitably we're not going to have all of the
01:54 --> 01:57 information at any one time to make decisions. So, there's a
01:57 --> 02:01 sort of balance here about being confident with what you have and
02:01 --> 02:04 also being open with what you don't know yet.
02:05 --> 02:08 Although we all know the best thing to do as a new leader joining an
02:08 --> 02:11 organisation is to spend the first sort of year starting every
02:12 --> 02:14 sentence with, well, in my last organisation, what we did was.
02:16 --> 02:19 It's a great way to get everyone on board, I've found. I mean, there's a
02:20 --> 02:23 real irony in that though, isn't it? Because we hire people because of their last
02:23 --> 02:27 experience, and then when they arrive in the organisation, we really don't want to hear
02:27 --> 02:31 about it. I think that's the sort of, I mean, we'll get
02:31 --> 02:32 into it more, but there's something around,
02:34 --> 02:38 although you've been hired for your experience, having the humility
02:39 --> 02:43 to ask the questions and understand where you are now before
02:43 --> 02:46 you just directly apply it. Yes. But we'll come into
02:47 --> 02:50 all of this. Yeah. So, why, can you say a little bit about why we
02:50 --> 02:53 are particularly curious about this topic?
02:55 --> 02:58 Well, I think in this series, you know, what we're looking at is what are
02:58 --> 03:02 the tensions that we see leaders grappling with? And this one just
03:03 --> 03:06 seems to come up a lot. I think there's a lot of noise at the
03:06 --> 03:12 moment about leaders being vulnerable, about being your authentic self. And I
03:12 --> 03:15 think that's quite hard a lot of the time for people,
03:15 --> 03:19 not least working out what even is your authentic self. Actually, probably there's
03:19 --> 03:22 a separate rant about the phrase authentic self that we can go into another time,
03:23 --> 03:25 but I'm not into it.
03:26 --> 03:29 And yet we all know if you over-index on vulnerability, if you go
03:30 --> 03:34 too far, it's like weird, awkward oversharing. And equally,
03:34 --> 03:37 if you go too far on confidence, that has its downsides.
03:37 --> 03:42 And so, I see leaders, we see leaders sort of moving
03:42 --> 03:45 up and down. But what we also see is most people probably
03:46 --> 03:48 have a preferred place where they stand on this continuum.
03:49 --> 03:52 And there's no rights and wrongs in this,
03:53 --> 03:56 but what we want to do is help you understand as a listener
03:56 --> 04:00 where you might be on this spectrum and give you some lenses
04:00 --> 04:03 to think about if you wanted to shift, what might that look like? And where
04:04 --> 04:08 are some sort of contexts where you might want to be at one end or
04:08 --> 04:10 the other, or think about doing it differently.
04:12 --> 04:15 So, Maddy, do you want to talk us through when we're talking about confidence,
04:15 --> 04:18 what that looks like? So, I think
04:19 --> 04:23 confidence is a key component of leadership. This is what helps us decide.
04:23 --> 04:27 It helps us set the direction, maybe make some tough
04:27 --> 04:31 calls, and also to reassure people.
04:31 --> 04:36 I think that we looked at some research around this, and ultimately the most confident
04:36 --> 04:39 voice in the room tends to win the argument,
04:40 --> 04:44 be the most heard, and might not always be the
04:44 --> 04:48 right answer, but we are drawn
04:48 --> 04:52 to that confident voice. In fact, this research by
04:52 --> 04:56 Kennedy, Anderson, and Moore talked about how confidence, even when unjustified,
04:57 --> 04:59 leads to a higher social status on average.
05:00 --> 05:03 Confidence creates peer perceptions of social and task skill.
05:04 --> 05:07 So, i.e., if you're looking confident, I immediately
05:07 --> 05:11 kind of associate that, probably not necessarily
05:11 --> 05:15 consciously, but I'm going to associate that with someone who's got skill,
05:15 --> 05:19 even if you haven't. Yeah, I think we quite often confuse competence, uh,
05:19 --> 05:23 confidence and competence. And even when you know someone isn't
05:23 --> 05:27 correct, if they're really confident, you can find yourself
05:28 --> 05:30 second-guessing yourself. And I think, you know, for a leader,
05:31 --> 05:35 part of leading is creating followers. And you are more likely
05:35 --> 05:39 to get people following if you are able to confidently assert
05:39 --> 05:43 where you're going. Yeah. Who follows the person who's
05:44 --> 05:47 going, hmm, I'm sort of sure, or I'm fairly sure
05:47 --> 05:51 this is the right answer. And with that
05:52 --> 05:54 tone, of course, so you can hear the level of doubt for that person.
05:54 --> 05:57 So, even if that is more accurate,
05:58 --> 06:00 we're more likely to go with the person who says,
06:01 --> 06:05 I am confident this is the right decision, or obviously this is what
06:06 --> 06:09 we need to do next. So, even if the first one is a more accurate
06:09 --> 06:13 read on the situation, I'm probably listening
06:13 --> 06:15 out for the second more so.
06:17 --> 06:21 And this is kind of compounded, right? Because organisations
06:21 --> 06:25 will tend to reward that signal over accuracy.
06:26 --> 06:29 So, the confident person is the one that gets promoted, or the
06:30 --> 06:34 confident person is the one whose idea gets heard. And gets taken
06:34 --> 06:38 forward. There are some professions where it
06:38 --> 06:42 is supremely important to be able to project confidence.
06:43 --> 06:45 I was recently talking to a neurosurgeon,
06:46 --> 06:49 and if you are going to
06:49 --> 06:53 cut open somebody's head, they need to have a
06:53 --> 06:58 very high degree of certainty that you are,
06:58 --> 07:01 A, capable, but also that you are really confident that this is a thing that
07:01 --> 07:05 needs to happen and that you know how to solve it or do whatever needs
07:05 --> 07:09 to be done. And in
07:09 --> 07:14 the conversation with this person, it became clear that what
07:15 --> 07:18 they did was both project this confidence, but they also
07:19 --> 07:22 coupled it with a sort of humility. So, they would say
07:22 --> 07:26 this thing needs to happen, but here are the choices that you have
07:26 --> 07:30 within that, or let's talk through the different
07:30 --> 07:33 options, but what I would recommend is this,
07:33 --> 07:36 that, or the other. And if you have, you have people's lives in
07:37 --> 07:40 your hands saying, oh, I'm not sure, is a really
07:40 --> 07:43 challenging place to be. And equally going,
07:44 --> 07:48 oh, I find the weight of having these life and death abilities
07:48 --> 07:52 is an entirely valid feeling to have, but probably
07:52 --> 07:55 not one that you want to share with your patients. You might take that somewhere
07:55 --> 07:59 else. So I think there is something in every
07:59 --> 08:02 job. There's places where you need to project more confidence and
08:02 --> 08:06 also places where you don't have to so much, or where it is
08:06 --> 08:09 more appropriate or more useful to be more
08:10 --> 08:13 open about the things you're uncertain about, the vulnerabilities or the feelings and those
08:14 --> 08:17 sorts of things. There's something there too about how
08:17 --> 08:21 you need both that confidence and competence. If I'm going
08:21 --> 08:25 to go into a situation like using, yeah, you absolutely want some
08:25 --> 08:29 reassurance from the person who's going to cut your head open or Who's
08:29 --> 08:33 going to go into a raging fire and try and solve that? There's multiple
08:33 --> 08:37 examples, aren't there, of where you really want to know that both the confidence
08:37 --> 08:41 matches the competence. And maybe there's something in
08:41 --> 08:44 there, and this kind of helps with the vulnerability piece later,
08:45 --> 08:48 that you want to know that that person's
08:49 --> 08:53 confident in what they know, but also what they don't know. And that's
08:53 --> 08:57 really clear to them. Well, I think that leads into the dark side of confidence
08:57 --> 09:01 maybe. And I think we've all seen where people have
09:01 --> 09:04 been overconfident and that has not worked out well for them and the people around
09:04 --> 09:08 them. It can lead to people being rigid, to people not listening, to people
09:08 --> 09:12 making mistakes that are worse than they needed to be if they
09:12 --> 09:15 had perhaps engaged more with the people around them.
09:16 --> 09:19 And also, I find when people have themselves been overconfident,
09:20 --> 09:23 you feel it more if it goes wrong.
09:23 --> 09:27 It feels like a bigger disaster because you were the one that really pushed for
09:27 --> 09:30 it. And when we were looking at this,
09:31 --> 09:35 I found a bit of research by Moore and Healy where
09:35 --> 09:39 they broke it down into sort of 3 different kinds of overconfidence
09:40 --> 09:43 that they tend to see. And I thought this was quite interesting. So the first
09:43 --> 09:46 one, they all start with over because The fun of a model
09:46 --> 09:50 is finding usually words that begin with C, but in this case, words that begin
09:51 --> 09:54 with over. So, overestimation. This is overestimating your
09:55 --> 09:58 ability, your level of control, overestimating your chance of success.
09:59 --> 10:02 This is me being very convinced on a regular basis that I am going to
10:02 --> 10:03 win the Omaze house.
10:05 --> 10:08 Not before I do.
10:08 --> 10:10 Well, we'll see, Maddie.
10:12 --> 10:16 The other is over-placement, where people think that
10:16 --> 10:20 they're better than others. And most people do this to an extent. So most
10:20 --> 10:23 people, if you ask them to rate themselves on anything,
10:24 --> 10:28 will put themselves over halfway. And that's not
10:29 --> 10:32 necessarily unhealthy, but it's where you think you're
10:33 --> 10:37 an 11 out of 10, and actually you're a 3. It's where
10:37 --> 10:40 you've got these really big gaps that it becomes problematic in businesses.
10:41 --> 10:44 And a lot of the work that I'm doing at the moment is sort of
10:45 --> 10:48 going through 360s with people and looking at where are these
10:48 --> 10:51 gaps that they're seeing and what does that mean and how does that
10:51 --> 10:54 potentially play out in the decisions that they're making.
10:56 --> 11:00 So, overestimation, overplacement, and overprecision,
11:00 --> 11:02 which is being really certain that you are right.
11:04 --> 11:07 And I think we've all seen that where someone is so convinced that they're
11:08 --> 11:11 way of doing things that their belief is the right way, that even when you're
11:12 --> 11:15 like, look, data, look, everything's on fire, they stick to it.
11:16 --> 11:20 If you, as a leader, are very confident, then I guess
11:20 --> 11:24 these might be 3 things to think about. Is there one of those that tends
11:24 --> 11:28 to be a bit more of your go-to? Do you notice that you
11:29 --> 11:32 find it hard to admit that maybe
11:33 --> 11:34 you are not completely correct all the time?
11:35 --> 11:38 Do you find it hard to invite people's different
11:38 --> 11:43 perspectives and views in? Then maybe you're sort of over-indexing here.
11:46 --> 11:49 I've just been pulling up a book because obviously we
11:49 --> 11:53 know we love a book. It's Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart, because she
11:53 --> 11:57 talks in there about having grounded confidence. And with that is
11:57 --> 12:01 humility, which you and I have talked a lot about. It's the
12:01 --> 12:05 humility with the confidence that helps it not be this not
12:05 --> 12:09 be over-indexed. And under her exploration around
12:09 --> 12:13 humility, it talks about openness to new learning combined with
12:13 --> 12:16 the balance of accurate assessment of our contributions, including our strengths,
12:17 --> 12:20 imperfections, and opportunities for growth. So that's,
12:20 --> 12:23 can we be confident in what we know about ourselves and our
12:24 --> 12:27 competence? But her one line where she sums it up is,
12:27 --> 12:31 and this emerged from the research she did in the original work around Dare to
12:31 --> 12:35 Lead, was, I'm here to get it right. Not to be right.
12:37 --> 12:40 Snappy Brené Brown. Always, right?
12:41 --> 12:44 But just when you were saying then, that just really prompted it for me without
12:44 --> 12:48 wanting to throw in too much research frameworks and everything
12:48 --> 12:52 else, which we love to do. In our previous series, we talked a lot about
12:52 --> 12:56 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. And when I'm above the line, I'm open,
12:56 --> 13:00 curious, and committed to learning. When I'm below the line, I'm closed
13:00 --> 13:04 defenses, defensive, and committed to being right. So it's this,
13:04 --> 13:08 and I think that kind of really links in with that. I'm here to get
13:08 --> 13:10 it right, not to be right. I love that.
13:12 --> 13:15 Opening your book on Brené is a beautiful segue. If we've talked about what confidence
13:16 --> 13:18 looks like, what do we mean by vulnerability?
13:19 --> 13:22 Let me just go to my page marked with vulnerability.
13:26 --> 13:29 So, um, I also checked that
13:29 --> 13:34 when Brené did her TED Talk on this, it was 2010 when
13:34 --> 13:37 she did that original TED Talk talking about vulnerability.
13:38 --> 13:41 And she basically— oh, oh, what? You don't think so?
13:41 --> 13:45 Oh no. I just seem— that seems unlikely because that would be 16 years ago.
13:46 --> 13:49 Yeah. And I think mathematically that's impossible because
13:50 --> 13:52 then I'd be 16 years older than I was when I heard this thing probably
13:52 --> 13:56 last year. Yeah, of course. Something's gone weird in the space-time
13:56 --> 13:59 continuum. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't changed age, but it was,
13:59 --> 14:04 yeah, 16 years ago. But she talks about vulnerability being uncertainty,
14:05 --> 14:07 risk, and emotional exposure.
14:09 --> 14:12 And it's the
14:12 --> 14:15 emotion we experience during those times, right,
14:15 --> 14:17 of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
14:18 --> 14:22 And it's the birthplace,
14:22 --> 14:26 if you like, of connection, belonging, creativity, and trust.
14:27 --> 14:30 And all of her— in all of her work, she really talked about it being
14:30 --> 14:34 a strength. And in fact, the research showed that most of us are raised
14:34 --> 14:38 to believe that being vulnerable is weak, and that cut across lots of different cultures.
14:38 --> 14:42 Ultimately, I think that belief can lead people to over-index on
14:43 --> 14:47 confidence. But what she says is vulnerability is not weakness,
14:48 --> 14:52 it is our greatest measure of courage. Which I
14:52 --> 14:56 thought, yeah, you can't be brave unless you're being vulnerable. Yeah.
14:56 --> 15:00 Yeah. And I think when we are dialing up the right
15:00 --> 15:03 level of vulnerability, when we're using, perhaps using is not quite the
15:04 --> 15:08 right word, but when we are vulnerable in the right places, in the right way,
15:08 --> 15:12 it really grounds our leadership in authenticity and
15:12 --> 15:15 things like admitting mistakes or acknowledging gaps,
15:15 --> 15:19 asking for help that makes leaders relatable.
15:20 --> 15:22 And can really kind of break down hierarchy,
15:23 --> 15:27 make it safe for other people to speak up and say, hang on a second,
15:27 --> 15:30 I think this is wrong, or I did make a mistake and we
15:31 --> 15:34 need to correct this. We'll go into the sort of the other side of that,
15:34 --> 15:37 but rather than perhaps hiding all of that stuff for fear of
15:37 --> 15:41 not being able to share it. Yeah, totally. And I was reading
15:41 --> 15:44 as part of this, if you're going to flush a book, I'm going to flush
15:45 --> 15:48 a book. This is Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein.
15:48 --> 15:50 And guys, if you wanted a book to read off the back of this,
15:51 --> 15:54 this is very thin, very thin. He's talking about the same thing.
15:54 --> 15:58 He's saying, asking questions of people to understand more is
15:58 --> 16:01 an act of vulnerability because it suggests you don't know
16:02 --> 16:05 stuff, but it is such a quick way to build relationships,
16:05 --> 16:09 to build trust. And he talks a lot about how in the modern world
16:09 --> 16:13 where everything's complex and interdependent, the thing that
16:13 --> 16:17 helps break through that is really strong relationships and communication.
16:19 --> 16:22 And the humility to
16:22 --> 16:26 ask questions, to understand, is the bedrock of both of those things.
16:29 --> 16:32 Yeah, I think that's great. And also while we're here,
16:32 --> 16:35 just something else, I can't, and I can't remember where I read this, but someone
16:36 --> 16:39 was saying about, if you're thinking about when to do this, they said if
16:39 --> 16:43 you have demonstrated competence and then you're vulnerable,
16:43 --> 16:45 it increases your likability.
16:46 --> 16:48 Whereas if you do it the other way around, it doesn't so much.
16:51 --> 16:54 So, that's people. I mean, that seems sort of logical,
16:54 --> 16:57 doesn't it? I think something else that we
16:58 --> 17:01 kind of found in our research, which sort of sits
17:02 --> 17:05 outside Brené's work, is this sort of vulnerability, big vulnerability bucket,
17:06 --> 17:09 but we found some types of vulnerability,
17:10 --> 17:14 which I think can sort of help place this in a slightly
17:14 --> 17:19 more practical way. And this was an article from Kevin Novak where
17:19 --> 17:22 it talked about 3 types. 3 is the magic number today. Talked about 3
17:23 --> 17:26 types of vulnerability, a process vulnerability. So,
17:27 --> 17:30 learning, learning in public, admitting you don't know something,
17:30 --> 17:33 and this can kind of really build trust. So,
17:34 --> 17:38 you might be confident about an element, but I'm going to admit that
17:38 --> 17:41 I don't fully know the technical details. So, I'm curious to see how this
17:41 --> 17:45 applies in your world, or I'm curious to see how my thinking
17:45 --> 17:47 will work with the work that you do.
17:49 --> 17:52 Tell me more. And that echoes so much with this Shine
17:52 --> 17:56 book on ask people questions so that you can understand more so that you can
17:56 --> 17:59 get to the better outcomes. 100%. Yeah. The second
18:00 --> 18:04 one was outcome vulnerability. So, admitting uncertainty about results or direction.
18:04 --> 18:09 Potentially, it's about being really sure of being sure
18:09 --> 18:12 of where you're going, but being in a bit of a phase that you're unsure
18:13 --> 18:16 about. As long as we've got clear vision or strategy set,
18:17 --> 18:20 there may be some stuff in there that we're unsure about, and we don't know
18:20 --> 18:23 kind of how that'll work out, and that's okay to be sort of vulnerable
18:23 --> 18:27 about that. Yeah. And I think he does a
18:27 --> 18:31 lot on sort of change and organizational change. And I think he's thinking about if
18:31 --> 18:34 you're in the middle of getting an organization to shift,
18:35 --> 18:38 it's probably not the time at that stage to go, is this shift
18:38 --> 18:42 the right one? That's not the time to do it. But right at the beginning,
18:43 --> 18:46 when you're going, let's explore this problem, what should we be doing?
18:46 --> 18:49 I think you can talk through that at that stage. Yes.
18:50 --> 18:54 But once the ship is at full steam, you know,
18:54 --> 18:57 there might be times where you do, like if it, if you've been doing something
18:57 --> 19:01 and it clearly isn't delivering the results, then reconsidering. But I
19:01 --> 19:05 worked with an organization once and the leader was
19:05 --> 19:09 so uncertain that it was, we're going to go this way. And then it
19:09 --> 19:12 was like, oh, 3 weeks later, we're pivoting. And then 3 weeks later, we were
19:12 --> 19:16 pivoting again and again. And it just made everyone so
19:17 --> 19:20 demoralized because you build up this energy to, right, we're going to do a thing.
19:20 --> 19:22 And then suddenly you're not doing the thing. Yeah.
19:24 --> 19:27 Um, so I think we, we talk a lot about there's no right answers in
19:27 --> 19:30 this. I think that outcome vulnerability,
19:31 --> 19:34 when you, there are times when you, when it's okay to say, I'm not
19:34 --> 19:39 sure where we're going, but there are other times when it's perhaps not
19:39 --> 19:42 that helpful. Agreed. And the third
19:42 --> 19:46 one was emotional vulnerability. So sharing,
19:46 --> 19:49 sharing how it feels, or you can use this to validate others'
19:50 --> 19:53 experience. I guess the key component here, especially is if you go back
19:54 --> 19:58 to your example, Kate, about change is don't
19:58 --> 20:03 share so much that you make it about yourself or in sharing
20:03 --> 20:08 experiences that kind of then can burden others with
20:09 --> 20:12 the distress or the emotionality of what that is. So I, and I guess what
20:12 --> 20:14 you're saying there really is it's,
20:16 --> 20:19 this is situational too. So there might be these different types of
20:20 --> 20:23 vulnerability. And inside of those,
20:23 --> 20:27 there'll be situations where it's really important and situations
20:28 --> 20:30 where it's less important or situations where it's really good to use.
20:33 --> 20:37 And there's this constant kind of judgment call that
20:37 --> 20:40 you need to make about what is the right level
20:41 --> 20:45 of sharing. And ultimately that
20:45 --> 20:49 takes being brave and being vulnerable to
20:49 --> 20:52 do that and not always get it right. Yeah, to be able to sort of
20:52 --> 20:55 calibrate around it. I think this is when you
20:55 --> 20:59 talk about vulnerability and ask people to be openly vulnerable,
20:59 --> 21:03 it's usually emotional vulnerability that makes them look like they want to
21:03 --> 21:03 die at the thought.
21:07 --> 21:11 And you're right, it is contextual, but I
21:11 --> 21:13 think a lot of it is really thinking about why am I doing this?
21:13 --> 21:17 I've known leaders and the emotions just leaked out of them.
21:18 --> 21:22 And it was almost like they were using their teams to catch and handle their
21:22 --> 21:26 emotions, whether they were crying, whether the emotion was anger, whatever it was.
21:26 --> 21:29 And the team sort of had to catch and manage that. Like,
21:29 --> 21:33 that is sharing how you're feeling, but it's probably not helpful for
21:33 --> 21:36 the people around you. And maybe there's a different space to go and talk through
21:36 --> 21:39 those with a peer or someone outside
21:40 --> 21:43 or whoever. And I think it's the why you're doing this. So, in the middle
21:44 --> 21:47 of COVID we had leaders who would share, I'm finding this really hard,
21:47 --> 21:50 because it validated other people who were finding it
21:50 --> 21:53 really hard. I'm going crazy today because I've
21:54 --> 21:57 got my kids at home and they're not doing homeschooling, and they're going to knock
21:58 --> 22:01 on the door 5 times in this meeting, and I'm going stir crazy,
22:02 --> 22:05 is a sharing. But it's helpful
22:05 --> 22:08 potentially for the other people who are juggling that in your team to know,
22:09 --> 22:13 A, it's not just them, and B, that if the most
22:14 --> 22:17 senior person in the team is open about that, it becomes okay to talk about
22:18 --> 22:21 it and it becomes okay to experience it and to try and manage it differently.
22:22 --> 22:25 So, I think there's different situations on this, absolutely.
22:25 --> 22:28 But I think a lot of it comes back to what is your intent?
22:29 --> 22:33 Yes. Yeah. I was talking to someone on a COVID example literally this week
22:33 --> 22:37 who said they had a senior leader who every time there was an all-company
22:37 --> 22:39 meeting in COVID turned up and cried.
22:40 --> 22:43 And they were like, it's just not again.
22:46 --> 22:50 Whereas that may not have been the intent of that leader. They might've been wanting
22:50 --> 22:53 to show their humanity, but it's like, well, why do you want to show that
22:54 --> 22:55 humanity? What is it that you're trying to do with it?
22:57 --> 23:00 I'll get off my soapbox. And look,
23:01 --> 23:03 when it's done well, I mean,
23:04 --> 23:12 ultimately, it's authentic,
23:12 --> 23:16 natural human thing to do. And it
23:16 --> 23:20 can really build trust and
23:21 --> 23:25 relatable— I'm not going to get that. I'm just going
23:25 --> 23:28 to totally make up a word there. Make you more relatable. Let's go that
23:29 --> 23:32 way. To employees, to investors,
23:32 --> 23:37 to stakeholders, whoever those people might be. By accessing
23:37 --> 23:42 this in the right situation with the right kind of vulnerability paired
23:42 --> 23:46 with some confidence
23:47 --> 23:50 that allows us to kind of see and believe,
23:50 --> 23:54 okay, so for the most part, you've got this. And I
23:54 --> 23:58 get that there's some, something that's challenging here, or there is something that you don't
23:58 --> 24:04 know. And those things paired together Fantastic.
24:05 --> 24:08 Yeah, maybe a better word for this sort of emotional vulnerability is just showing
24:08 --> 24:13 your humanity. Because I think often when
24:13 --> 24:15 I think of leaders that I've worked for, it's when they feel like they have
24:16 --> 24:19 to be bulletproof and they have to know everything. And it's
24:20 --> 24:23 very hard to get a sense of a person as a person
24:24 --> 24:28 when there's so much projection of perfection and
24:28 --> 24:31 whatever. And it then means if you're constantly like, I'm perfect,
24:31 --> 24:35 I'm perfect, I'm perfect. And then you make something wrong, everyone sort of goes,
24:35 --> 24:37 oh, that wasn't perfect, was it?
24:38 --> 24:42 Maybe that was just us being mean. But also though, other people then
24:42 --> 24:46 have to live up to that. If you are projecting this perfect
24:47 --> 24:49 all the time, and that's exactly what Brené Brown would talk about in terms of
24:50 --> 24:53 being armoring. When there is, when we're fearful or
24:54 --> 24:57 insecure, we kind of armor up and it kind of can project in
24:57 --> 24:59 a way as confidence, but in actual fact,
25:01 --> 25:04 it's armored rather than actual confidence.
25:05 --> 25:08 Yeah, totally. I think that's a much more eloquent way of putting it.
25:09 --> 25:12 And I think you're right. And people can see that. They can see that it
25:12 --> 25:14 isn't real underneath it.
25:16 --> 25:20 Yeah, absolutely. And so, we know there's downsides
25:20 --> 25:23 to over-vulnerability. And a lot of it is around,
25:26 --> 25:30 people just tell if it isn't true. They tell if you're doing it performatively.
25:31 --> 25:33 You can definitely overshare.
25:36 --> 25:40 And particularly with this sort of emotional vulnerability, I knew
25:40 --> 25:43 a leader who used to cry on members of her team.
25:44 --> 25:47 And it's like, you're putting so much emotional weight for that person
25:48 --> 25:51 to carry and catch. And I think sometimes people
25:52 --> 25:55 don't realize the sort of cost of that on the people that are around them.
25:57 --> 26:00 Yeah, I think we had a good example in the first series, and I'm now
26:00 --> 26:04 not going to remember what the company name was, but the leader who the video
26:04 --> 26:07 went viral because he let everybody go on
26:07 --> 26:11 a Zoom call And sort
26:11 --> 26:14 of broke down and said how awful it was for him too. Just not,
26:15 --> 26:18 not relatable. Um, yeah,
26:18 --> 26:22 insulting rather than actually kind of trying to build any
26:22 --> 26:24 sort of understanding.
26:27 --> 26:30 So part of this series
26:30 --> 26:33 is we want to sort of, um, towards the end, help people work out,
26:33 --> 26:36 are there, is there one end of the spectrum or other that you tend to
26:36 --> 26:37 over-index on?
26:40 --> 26:43 In fact, I would love if anyone can write in with a different word than
26:43 --> 26:46 over-index because I've said it so many times in the
26:47 --> 26:50 planning of this now, and it's just starting to feel weird. But, uh, so on
26:51 --> 26:55 vulnerability, Maddie, what are some of the signs that you might be too
26:55 --> 26:57 far on this and projecting too much uncertainty?
27:00 --> 27:03 And yeah, so I think maybe kind of picking up on some of the things
27:03 --> 27:06 that we've already said is you share raw, unprocessed uncertainty.
27:06 --> 27:10 Honestly, I don't know if any of this is going to work or any of
27:10 --> 27:13 this works. And what you
27:13 --> 27:17 invariably end up doing is passing on your
27:17 --> 27:20 anxiety to the team,
27:22 --> 27:25 and they might then catch that and amplify it. So,
27:26 --> 27:29 that can lead to panic and franticness.
27:30 --> 27:33 I feel like we've talked about emotional contagion being a real thing on a previous
27:33 --> 27:37 episode, and uncertainty can really spread very fast.
27:38 --> 27:42 Yes, agreed. And I think there are ways of, there are ways of perhaps
27:42 --> 27:45 talking about the things that don't work without leading to
27:46 --> 27:47 total anxiety.
27:51 --> 27:54 So, there's an example of over-indexing, over-indexing on
27:54 --> 27:56 vulnerability. How about on confidence?
27:59 --> 28:02 Yeah, I think there's a few things on, on overconfidence. You know, you might
28:03 --> 28:07 find that If you struggle to say, I don't know,
28:07 --> 28:10 or I got that wrong, that might be a sign that you are over-indexed on
28:10 --> 28:14 confidence. And that might be something to experiment
28:15 --> 28:18 with and ask questions of the people around you more. If you find
28:18 --> 28:22 that people are not disagreeing with you as
28:22 --> 28:26 a leader, that's, I think, a really concerning sign. And that might be that you're
28:26 --> 28:30 projecting overconfidence and that people either are blindly
28:30 --> 28:34 following you, which isn't ideal, or they don't feel confident in
28:34 --> 28:37 themselves to disagree with you or to bring different perspectives.
28:39 --> 28:42 And if you genuinely find yourself thinking you're the smartest person in the
28:43 --> 28:46 room all of the time, then again, that might be that sort of over-placement,
28:47 --> 28:50 overconfidence that we were talking about. In the short term,
28:51 --> 28:55 this might help you, but in the longer term, you're not going to get— it's
28:56 --> 28:59 about getting the right answers rather than being right. There's always going to be
29:00 --> 29:03 information that you don't have, insights you don't have, perspectives you don't have,
29:05 --> 29:08 and overconfidence stops you from hearing those. So, it increases
29:08 --> 29:12 the risk of things going wrong. And so, if you find
29:12 --> 29:16 yourself, when people disagree with you, getting defensive, again, that might be
29:16 --> 29:19 a sign that you are a bit over-indexed on confidence and it might
29:19 --> 29:22 be worth moving down the scale.
29:24 --> 29:27 So I think we started with, there's no right or wrong with these.
29:28 --> 29:31 It's not either, this isn't an either or. It's how do
29:31 --> 29:35 you pair confidence with that vulnerability so
29:35 --> 29:39 that both become meaningful? And I guess
29:40 --> 29:44 that's our, that's our little experiment for you. Am I pairing vulnerability with
29:44 --> 29:48 confidence? And some examples we picked from the
29:48 --> 29:51 article we mentioned earlier. So instead of, I don't know if this will work.
29:52 --> 29:55 Try, there are parts of this project that I'm still working out and I'm confident
29:56 --> 29:59 in our ability to figure them out together. It's that not
30:00 --> 30:03 totally handing off, just going, ah, I don't know if this
30:04 --> 30:08 will work and passing on the anxiety, but actually balancing
30:08 --> 30:11 that with, okay, so there's some stuff here we don't know, and together
30:12 --> 30:15 I think we can work this out. Flip side, you know,
30:15 --> 30:19 if you're feeling really confident about something, you could go, I'm really confident this is
30:19 --> 30:23 the right direction, but please tell me if you think there's anything else we
30:23 --> 30:27 should be thinking about in relationship to this. Just gives you a
30:27 --> 30:32 sense of the confidence that you're feeling, and it's a more open, vulnerable test.
30:33 --> 30:38 And so, yeah, have a go, have a play, try and balance confidence and vulnerability
30:38 --> 30:40 in your questions this week. Nice.
30:46 --> 30:49 So, dear listener, as we get to the end of this, have a
30:50 --> 30:54 think. Is there one side of this polarity that you tend
30:54 --> 30:59 to lean towards more than the other? And what would it feel like to
31:00 --> 31:03 move or shift or try feeling this further down to the
31:04 --> 31:07 other end? Yeah, great.
31:07 --> 31:11 And if you enjoyed listening to tonight's episode, please share with someone
31:12 --> 31:15 else who might find it interesting. Yes, do. Everybody loves
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31:19 --> 31:22 probably somewhere. Join us for our next episode,
31:22 --> 31:26 which is going to be our embodied leadership special. If you don't
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