How showing vulnerability helps build a stronger team: exactly when it's harder
Every time I do it, it’s magical. And yet, I refrain. After all, I’ve spent a life showing myself strong and helpful, capable of dealing with anything you throw at me, and with composure and a smile (without asking for help). Isn’t that the definition of “very professional”? Well... it surely has its merits, and I’ve found it’s also a recipe for my exhaustion. My “invincibility armour” creates separation, does not let help in. At the same time, it may also limit the capacity of others to ask for help, afraid of displaying their own vulnerabilities and needs.
Interestingly, when I do recognize “I’m tired”, or “I have too much on my plate”, help seems to magically unfold my way, new possibilities and choices emerge. I feel lighter, more supported, in this together. It’s a muscle I am learning to strengthen - and for me it might be a lifelong journey.
I see my “strong-alone-exhausted” pattern in many of the executives and teams we are coaching. Often overwhelmed with work, focused on delivering the load ‘on their own plate’, they don’t stop to acknowledge their own weaknesses and limits, to share what is hard, where they could use some help.
Paradoxically, Daniel Coyle - author of "The Culture Code" - has found that sharing vulnerability is exactly one of the 3 elements that strengthen teams and their results - "how-showing-vulnerability-helps-build-a-stronger team". Moreover, trust and cooperation are muscles we develop in teams, not some magic that descends out of the blue, and they grow from showing vulnerability, not the other way around.
Contrary to our instincts, the more overwhelmed with work and difficulties, the more important it might be to notice our “impulse” to keep going ‘strong and alone’, to pause to acknowledge what is hard, and to ask for help. And the more we do it, the easier it gets, and the stronger the team grows.
When facing our harder challenges, that's exactly when we need our teams the most.
*Image by Daniel Coyle on TED Ideas
