Vulnerability at Work, why not?
How often, do you see these two words — vulnerable and work, in the same sentence? Our attitude towards work doesn’t really account for a sense of vulnerability, does it? I mean, haven’t we always been told to suck it up, just get work done at the workplace, and leave the personal humane factor out of it?
All through my youth, I was told that the workplace is a brutal, competitive, cutthroat environment where employers/employees didn’t really care much about the individual resource. So it got me thinking, “Where does this leave room for Vulnerability?”
Often seen as a word that emotes weakness, especially at work, most people feel the workplace isn’t the right place for it. Instead, post-work drinks or hangouts bring out these emotions that have been festered inside which sadly, usually results in gossip or bickering about their colleagues/bosses or even their lives.
The Interview
In an interview, I attended quite recently, I was asked, “What is one word you would identify yourself with?”
My response was — Vulnerability. I explained how being vulnerable with my colleagues or managers would help me foster trust with the people I spend 8–10 of my waking hours every single day.
Now, I get it, this is a VERY unconventional response. There are so many other words I could have identified myself with. Curious, passionate, philosophical, forgiving, etc could have been some of my other responses. But I decided to go with vulnerable because I am a vulnerable person at work and I appreciate it but also, I sorta wanted to gauge the reaction of my interviewers and get a sense of the kind of people I may be working with.
Towards the end of the interview, when I asked for feedback or things I could work on (which, if you haven’t done before, I’d really recommend), I got mixed feedback from my interviewers regarding my use of the word Vulnerable.
While one stated that in their 20-year career, people don’t really appreciate vulnerability in the corporate world or the mention of it in interviews, the other interviewer told me it was endearing and awarded me with brownie points. I’ll be honest, it left me quite confused.
Vulnerability Survey
A few months ago, I did a quick survey with around 25 of my friends, who were all millennials, working in various industries. I asked them three questions and gave them a scale from 1–5 to rate how they felt.
While about 40% of them believed that the importance of being vulnerable scored 4 or higher, 20% didn’t really consider it too important. The majority though, almost 80%, did agree that working with people who’d listen to them, would indeed make them happier.
Few didn’t really think it was important to be vulnerable or have people listen to them at work, which I thought was quite intriguing.
Now the response I was personally most fascinated by is the one below.
Almost 40% of my friends, who took this survey, weren’t comfortable telling their bosses that they were overworked. On the flip side, 40% were quite comfortable bringing it up with their bosses.
Being an advocate of vulnerability and seeing that it help with transparency, fostering trust, creating a safe space in my teams, and resulting in solutions, I have quite struggled to understand why a lot of people don’t encourage healthy vulnerability at work. Wouldn’t at least a portion of the 40%, who weren’t comfortable telling their bosses, benefit from it?
My Experience with Vulnerability
I remember, a few months into my job, I wasn’t enjoying it one bit. I knew I could do a lot more and the work I was doing was quite transactional and mundane, making me feel very lost and purposeless. Staying motivated at work was a struggle and going to the office just became a formality. I was desperate for something to change.
At a Retrospective with my team that included Directors in HR, Operations, and Project Management, I realized that I couldn’t put a lid on these feelings and just let it all out hysterically, almost breaking down into tears.
There was silence in the room for a while…pin-drop silence. It’s not every day that a 21-year-old newbie decides to go on an emotional rant in such meetings, is it? But what followed, really turned things around for me.
After the silence, I was immediately met with words of encouragement and empathy. People took turns opening up about their own experiences and how they got out of their rut. There was a lot of reassurance that I’ll get through and many offered me really good advice.
Even my boss, very kindly, took me out to lunch to encourage me and help me identify work that would keep me intrigued and motivated. A LOT changed for me because I was vulnerable that day. It resulted in awareness, empathy, and most importantly solutions.
This is just one of many instances where vulnerability has served me well and helped me trust my team a lot more.
My Learnings and Takeaways
The way I see it, I had two choices that day — Let that purposeless feeling consume me and allow my work and my health to take a hit or tell my team about how I felt even though it was very personal.
I can’t promise you that doing what I did would render you the same outcome. In fact, I doubt if many will even get a similar outcome. It really does depend on the culture of your organization and the nature of relationships within members of the team.
However, I’ve learned that it takes a small amount of vulnerability in your team to open doors towards being empathic and finding solutions. I’ve seen this effect trickle down like ripples throughout a company or a program and when people share, not only do others start caring and maybe even opening up, most often they come up with solutions to change things for you.
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
― Brené Brown
So, are you open to embracing or introducing vulnerability at work, and if not, what’s holding you back? 🙂
