Leaders- Dare to Bare?
Posted on October 10, 2019 by Renu Goyal, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
This article is about creating a culture of trust in an organisation and how much a leader should share with his team members
#Trust #Vulnerability
Trust, empathy, connection, vulnerability etc. are the buzz words of leadership these days. As a leader, we are expected to be open and honest about our feelings in order to establish better connect and trust within our teams. However, as a leadership coach, I have often seen leaders struggling with what to share and how much to share. While there are variety of things which can be shared to establish rapport, in an organisational context it is said that if the leader is open about his/her humanness and is willing to be seen for who he/she is- a greater degree of trust is established within the team.
So how much of my humanness should I show? Do I tell them how scared I am feeling right now for our business? Do I tell them how upset I am that our proposal has been rejected by the management?
The question really is- “How do I share without seeming to be always a vulnerable leader?"
These are my takeaways from the below mentioned HBR article about how much to share-
The first rule of thumb is to ask yourself-
1. How would I feel if my manager shared this with me? If you have a comfortable feeling as an answer to this question, its most likely that your subordinates will feel the same. However, if the answer is opposite, it would be better to pass this opportunity of being vulnerable.
2. The second is to provide a solution to the problem rather than stopping at sharing of feelings or emotions. Which is essentially to use these lines of communication- “With regard to so and so____________, I am feeling_________. However, my plan is to do 1.___________, 2. _______; etc. and I need the following support from you 1. _______ 2. ________ etc. How do you feel about it? What else do you think we will need?”
There is no right or wrong approach and each person has his/her own balance- the key is to keep working to find that balance. Here, I would like to quote Minouche Shafik, Director- London School of Economics- "In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future they’ll be about the heart.” My appeal to all leaders reading this post is to be vulnerable and ask for help- nothing will take you further than the trust and support of your team.
This post has references from HBR article- "How Leaders Can Open Upto Their Teams Without Oversharing”.
