By Jocelyn Lovelle

Many years ago, I started working for a family hardware business, helping them rebrand and design a marketing strategy. I was in the first stages of unwinding my life from that of my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s and I desperately wanted two things. One, for no one to know how hard I was grieving my divorce, or that I was even getting a divorce. And two, to never make a mistake or be found out making a mistake.

I spent years trying to build relationships with people on the management team I was supporting, and somehow I couldn’t get through. I had good ideas, I was helpful, I stayed late, I worked weekends. And yet.

Then one Monday, about six years in, I sat down to go over sales numbers with one of the store managers, Sarah. From across the room with her back turned, she asked me how my weekend was. I started to answer and then without warning, even to myself, I started to cry. I had spent the weekend packing up my things after my first post-divorce breakup. Six years I never cried, never talked about a loss that I could feel in my bones, and then tears over a boyfriend. I was mortified.

Then something miraculous happened. Sarah dropped what she was doing, grabbed a box of tissues, came and sat down next to me, pulled me into a huge bear hug and said, “You just tell me what you need and my husband and I will help. We’ve got a truck if you have anything big to move.”

We had never hugged, never had a deep conversation, I’d never gotten her enthusiastic support on anything, and then this. 

VULNERABILITY IS AN OUTCOME

Vulnerability in the professional space has been a hot topic for years now. Leaders want to cultivate it, organizations want to harness it. But when we speak about vulnerability in the workplace, we are speaking about two distinct things. 

• True vulnerability, where we reveal something personal or scary enough that we feel open to criticism or some form of professional harm (retribution, labeling, demotion, lack of promotion).
• A host of other characteristics that are often confused with vulnerability: authenticity, transparency, humility, empathy.

When we talk about creating a work environment that cultivates vulnerability, what we want is a workspace that feels safe, that helps people feel empowered, that rewards transparency, empathy, kindness, trust, humility, and authenticity. 

Vulnerability is an outcome of those practices and should be treated very carefully, protected for its fragility and for its rarity. True vulnerability isn’t something that needs to happen every day, or even every week. It’s not something that needs to happen between every person in a company, or within large groups of people. 

When we confuse vulnerability with other ways of building trust, we diminish its power and this can lead to a culture of performative vulnerability, where the motivation for sharing comes from seeking validation or attention, manipulating perception, and a desire to increase power or prestige.

Often, true vulnerability isn’t planned, but we can become more conscious and aware of its power, choosing when to go deep and when to build connection with other tools like transparency or empathy, resources that don’t leave us as emotionally exposed.

PROTECTING VULNERABILITY

Different manifestations of vulnerability exist for different people. What feels vulnerable for one person may be second nature to someone else. For me, asking for help, admitting I didn’t know how to do something, or had made a mistake, were all incredibly vulnerable. For others, those things are a doorway to connection and shared responsibility. 

Because vulnerability leaves us open (to either attack or deeper connection) it’s imperative to protect the power of our own vulnerability. When we overuse it, we create too much exposure which can lead to fatigue, anxiety, fearfulness and protective responses–the exact opposite of the outcome we want. When we underutilize it, we miss the opportunity to become more open and receptive to others and ourselves, which is the key to the connection we all crave.  

Let’s Talk!