The Three Trickiest Words In Business?
They've become the holy trinity of modern leadership lingo: transparency, vulnerability, and the big one—authenticity. They sound innocent enough at first; it's easy to see the value of bringing out more of each one as part of improving your company culture. But without some rules of the road—and being able to role-model for your team what that looks like in real-time—they can quickly undermine the very thing you're trying to accomplish.
Vulnerability At Work
We could say that vulnerability is letting people see that something is affecting you without creating the expectation in them that they have to fix it.
There's a very subtle line between being emotional and asking others to 'hold' your emotions for you. Being emotional means letting people see you're having a tough day. But if the people on your team are walking-on-eggshells to not set you off, that means you're not holding it.
The key to being vulnerable at work is finding a way to share the essence of what's going on without going too far into the story. Your colleagues will feel honored that you trusted them enough to share, and inspired by how you manage yourself in challenging moments.
Transparency in Context
We could say that transparency is naming the things that you see—or you know that others are seeing—but in a way that's appropriate to the business reality.
Transparency in business means naming what's going on that you feel impacts the business. It doesn't mean sharing everything that everyone wants you to share.
People love transparency because it allows them to relax. They know you're upset—they're most likely upset with themselves—and naming what happened just takes the unnecessary anguish out of the situation.
Authenticity In Reality
We could say that authenticity is being real with yourself, and choosing an expression of your inner reality that fits the moment.
'Just be yourself.' It might be the world's worst advice. While it sounds empowering, it's the opposite, because it has an internal assumption that who you are is a static thing. What makes us human—and what turns an ordinary team into a great one—is our ability to discover who we are through our passion and our mistakes equally.
Your team wants to work in an environment that feels human, where they know where they stand, and where they don't have to put on a happy face to be at work. Having leaders who can role model these—vulnerability, transparency and authenticity—is certainly part of that.
It's just not fair to anyone to pretend that doing so is easy.