How can leadership be so connected with vulnerability? Leave the armor and join the arena!
"Managers vs. Leaders" is a well-known binomial and a dear topic amongst coaches who train executives. We live in working environments which require high level of specialization, we have profiles that don't even exist few years ago. You can easily understand how complex is handling teams where you have to deal with things you don't really know about. Think about Marketing teams: you have SEA, SEO, Paid Social, PR, Brand, CRO experts, Influencer Managers...then you should also know about tracking and at the same time have analytical skills and so on. How comes that you can manage a pool of so many diverse talents? In other words: what is the difference between managing and leading? Well, if you think you need to have knowledge about each single field, I am very sorry for you. You won't go very far. You have your team with specialized expertise, you should not worry about knowing everything. First thing you should do is to trust your people. At the end have you asked yourself why you hired someone who can't be trusted?
We can exclude that a leader is simply someone who knows more...well, of course you must have some knowledge but you don't become a leader just because you know more than others. But then what makes you a leader? YOUR COURAGE, YOUR BRAVERY.
Leadership is not about your C-title, your fancy desk in the office corner, the 7-digits monthly budget you handle: leadership is about exposing yourself out there. Leadership is about being accountable and responsible for your people and processes. Leadership is a never ending act of courage.
And there is one amazing thing about courage: courage is contagious like enthusiasm. Once you ignite courage, the fire will keep warm also the others around you. We have to build organizations and cultures where tough conversations, straight-forward feedbacks, whole-heart-speaking are welcome. We don't need armors, please. It is very important to make sure that our people are seen, heard, understood and taken care of with empathy.
What is the biggest obstacle against courage and daring leadership? Not fear, certainly. The greatest impediment is our respond to fear. Our armor (thoughts, prejudice, previous bad experiences) is protecting ourselves, it prevents us from acting with vulnerability. The ability of being a tremendous leader is strictly related to the ability of being vulnerable. Once we accept and become capable to lead with vulnerability, we become daring leaders who lead following their own values, we set the stage for others to rise and we have the gift of trusting the people we work with.
So please leave the armor and go to the arena!
I would like to end this article mentioning Brené Brown, some of you might already know her because of her famous TED talk "The Power of Vulnerability" that got over 30 millions views on YouTube. Brené is a research professor at the University of Houston, she spent many years studying shame, fear and vulnerability. She is the author of "Dare To Lead", a book I highly recommend for everybody who wants to lead with full heart.
Enjoy her:
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