When leaders choose vulnerability, everything shifts

By Dave Veale

When we first started working with one of our longest-standing clients about 15 years ago, vulnerability wasn't part of the leadership vocabulary. It wasn't even close.

The culture was structured, disciplined, and more comfortable with a command-and-control approach to leadership. Decisions flowed from the top. 

Leaders were expected to have answers. And to be fair, it worked – to a point.

But over time, we noticed something had shifted. We were engaged with leaders who were asking more questions. They became more vulnerable, more open about the challenges they were navigating. In short, they began creating space – for themselves and for the people around them and they were being rewarded with promotions and more responsibility

What followed wasn't incidental. Conversations became more honest. Teams became more engaged. Ideas surfaced faster and with less hesitation. You could feel the difference.

Now, that evolution is taking its next step. The organization is preparing to put many of its senior HR business partners through Using the Coach Approach™ – our proprietary coaching skills program that equips leaders with the mindset and practical tools to lead through questions rather than directives. It equips them to create the conditions where people can do their best thinking – and to empower others.

This evolution also signals how the organization values, and encourages, their HR business partners in being more strategic in supporting the organizational goals.

It's a significant commitment. And it reflects something we don't take for granted: a genuine organizational willingness to explore developing more than one style of leadership  – from a focus of controlling outcomes to also, when it is appropriate, creating the conditions for others to contribute fully.

That shift doesn't happen by accident. It starts with leaders who are willing to model something different. And at the heart of it is a quality we look for in every leader we coach: the willingness to be vulnerable.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni talks about vulnerability-based trust as the foundation everything else is built on. And in our experience, that's exactly right. The invulnerable leader – the one who never shows doubt, never admits a mistake – sends a clear message to everyone around them: neither can you. People stop taking risks. They stop speaking up. They start protecting themselves instead of doing their best work.

The opposite is equally powerful. When a leader signals that it's safe to speak honestly – to question, to challenge, to not have it all figured out – it changes the expectations for everyone else. It creates permission to fail forward, to surface hard truths, to bring bigger thinking to difficult problems.

That's what we've witnessed in this organization over the years. And it's what we're looking forward to building on.

The leaders creating the most impact today aren't the ones controlling every outcome.

They're the ones willing to go first – and trust that others will follow.

Dave Veale

Founder & CEO

Vision Coaching Inc.