Business Coach and CSR specialist, Mark Topley advises leaders that it’s OK to admit you don’t have all the answers and urges them to become more vulnerable at work.
Vulnerability is one of those words that is often viewed as weakness, and certainly traditionally leaders did not want to show that they were vulnerable because it might indicate that they were weak, or somehow substandard. But nothing could be further from the truth. Vulnerability is not to do with weakness. It’s to do with making it clear for your team that it’s okay to ask for help as nobody gets it right all the time.
It’s about culture
It’s certainly true that being vulnerable isn’t always comfortable. But the leaders who can push through that discomfort and see it as part of creating a culture where people are striving for excellence, but they’re very, very open about mistakes they themselves make, make it okay to ask for help, which is really important.
The key thing is that when somebody new joins, or somebody learns something new in the team, when they ask for help, they receive the right message. If someone is struggling to get to grips with something, and a colleague responds with something like “For goodness’ sake, we’ve shown you three times, what’s the matter with you?” That immediately closes things down and gives out the message that the best way to get along in that company is not to admit that you need help. Whereas on the other hand, if the colleague responds with, “Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. It took me a while to get it to start with too”. Then straight away you set up a relationship, which is partly learning, but one that takes away the pretence that people often put on at work, that they’ve got to get everything together in order to function. And that’s really damaging because it means all their energy goes into protecting themselves rather than being creative and being collaborative in a safe space.
The bottom-line benefits too
It’s worth bearing in mind that when people are engaged, and feel positive about work, they know they can contribute, and they feel safe and secure as part of the team, then their level of productivity goes up simply because they’ll be making fewer mistakes. Engaged people make fewer mistakes. I was told a horrendous statistic about a particular team where about 40% of the work they did was fixing their mistakes. And it was down to a lack of engagement. And so, if you can wipe that out and get people more engaged, feeling safe, that they’re part of things, and feeling that they don’t have to worry about blame and they can be honest, then you clear all that out of the way. And you will make fewer mistakes in the first place.
You don’t need to have all the answers
To quote Craig Groeschel, “People would rather follow a leader who is always REAL than one who is always RIGHT.” We need to get rid of this idea that as bosses, we’re supposed to have all the answers. If you’ve got all the answers, then you are deluding yourself.
I don’t have all the answers. Others don’t have all the answers, but the power of team is when we create a level playing field, and a safe place where people feel secure enough to share their ideas, then all the answers are in the room and the capacity to make things happen is in the room. But you’ve got to give people permission to do that.
It’s one of the key planks of building culture. The first one is to communicate belonging and safety. That means you are part of us, but we also have high standards. So that’s the key. The first part of demonstrating vulnerability means that there’s a clear playing field for us to play on in terms of getting things done because no one’s trying to hide behind anything. And then the next thing is building a sense of purpose and getting people connected to what it is that you do.
And that’s how you build a strong culture. Showing vulnerability is letting go of that idea that you need to have all the answers. You don’t need to get it right all the time.
About Mark
