For many of us, the topic of vulnerability conjures up images of The Emperor’s New Clothes, and we imagine ourselves standing naked in the conference room with nothing up our sleeves, not even sleeves. The original meaning of the word “vulnerable” indicated that you were putting yourself in a position where you could be physically wounded. So why, as healthcare leaders, would we drop our defenses and stand essentially naked in front of our staff? Why take that risk? Maybe we should be asking ourselves why we shouldn’t.
The Zero-Sum Illusion
When we’re in the middle of our daily struggles, vulnerability may feel like a zero-sum game. Either I maintain my façade that as a leader I have all the answers, or I let down my guard, expose the fact that I’m not actually all-knowing and take the risk of damaging the image that others have of me. It’s a win/lose proposition, right? The question here is which side of that equation actually poses the greater risk. Am I standing on thinner ice when I make myself vulnerable or when I choose not to? Let’s take a minute to consider that question and the zero-sum illusion that drives it.
Applying the concept of a zero-sum game to vulnerability assumes that the world of healthcare leadership is a bit like captaining a pirate vessel where anything other than absolute decisiveness is taken as a sign of weakness. Weakness is not tolerated, leads to loss of confidence, mutiny, and potentially walking the plank to be sacrificed to the sharks of career ruin. While this sounds like a pretty extreme portrayal of the corporate environment, it’s really not that far from how we often look at our daily work lives.
We hesitate to make ourselves vulnerable because we fear that others may think we don’t know what we’re doing or that maybe we don’t deserve our leadership title. The logical next step would be our removal and subsequent difficulty finding employment in a similar position. Therefore, vulnerability results in our loss and someone else’s gain. But does it?
Sailing the Corporate Seas
So, now that we’re all pondering whether we work in a hospital or on the Black Pearl as it sails the waters of the Caribbean, this is the ideal time to ask ourselves who we’re fooling when we try to hide our vulnerability. Because that’s exactly what we’re doing. None of us is Captain Jack Sparrow, and none of us would want to go up against the Kraken. Truth is, we’d lose every time because, whether we like to admit it or not, being human means that we were vulnerable from the day we were born. The sooner we admit that to ourselves, the sooner we can start thinking about what we do with the vulnerability that has been apparent to everyone but us.
You see, it really isn’t a question of whether we take the risk of exposing our vulnerability. We don’t have to stand metaphorically naked in front of our staff, because they can already see through whatever clothes, shield, or pirate costume we’re wearing. The real question at hand is how we break through the zero-sum illusion to see vulnerability as the wind that can power our sails rather than the storm that will tear them apart.
The Road Not Taken
Once we understand that vulnerability isn’t optional, we come back to the question of which road to take. Do we treat it as if it’s a weakness or a strength? If everyone already knows that we have inherent vulnerabilities, the only person we could fool is ourselves.
So, maybe we use vulnerability as one of the many tools in our leadership toolbox. By admitting that we don’t know everything, we’re not declaring ourselves incompetent. Rather, we’re appropriately acknowledging the importance of input from our team, our staff, and the organization as a whole. In doing so, we turn vulnerability into a positive-sum game. We create a culture where everyone is heard and valued and where we don’t have to carry the heavy emotional and mental burden of appearing to have all the answers.
So, maybe you don’t need an emperor’s new clothes or a pirate’s sword. You simply take the road less traveled by. For ourselves and our organizations that would indeed make all the difference.
