Running a company is difficult and many leaders think they must remain stoic at all costs. But Jacob Morgan, author of “The Future Leader,” joined the street to explain why being vulnerable should not be confused with being weak.
Transcription:
Jacob Morgan: When we think about some of the things that leaders do for employees, I think there are a couple of mistakes that leaders frequently make. One is that they assume they can't be vulnerable at work. They assume that vulnerability is a sign of weakness.
They assume that if you are vulnerable at work, people will consider you incompetent. So I recently wrote a book called Leading with Vulnerability, talked to hundreds of CEOs and surveyed 14,000 employees and really took a deep dive into the topic of vulnerability.
And what I discovered is that the ideal thing a leader can do is not just be vulnerable at work, but to combine vulnerability with leadership or competence with connection. A very simple example of this could be, instead of saying, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, which is being vulnerable, you add leadership to that.
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Then you could say: Sorry, I made a mistake, but this is what I learned from that mistake. And here are three things I will do in the future to make sure that mistake doesn't happen again. So as a leader, don't be afraid to show emotion or vulnerability.
But at the same time, when you do that, add leadership to that mix, add competition to that mix. I think that's a very, very important thing for leaders to do. And second, I think we're seeing a huge shift in terms of the types of leaders we see in organizations and there are a lot of different attributes and skill sets that I think we're starting to see a lot more of.
These are things like thinking like a futurist, being a coach, leading with vulnerability, as I mentioned, and I think a lot of that centers around people-centered leadership.
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And what that means is creating a corporate culture in an organization where it's not assuming that employees need to work there, but creating an environment where people actually want to work there. And I think that is a very big change in the minds of many leaders. And they're trying to figure out how to actually do it. And that all starts with having conversations with your employees and treating them as human beings and not just workers.
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