To be fair, there are times that things get SO bad that there are special 911 (e.g., emergency) agendas put forth to address a crisis. Then, there is some conversation regarding the ‘softer’ issues (e.g., time management; work/life balance; uncertainty about the organization’s direction), and maybe a Band-Aid type solution is added (e.g., a team building session or a stress expert brought in for a lunch time lecture). Time passes, things go back to ‘normal’ and leadership vulnerability returns to being undiscussable.

I know this because, on many occasions, I have been hired to do the team building, the talk on stress, as well as the follow up private conversations with the team leader and/or concerned members (separately is often the client preference versus in the team meeting) when the first two approaches fail to change the executive culture. Why is this a problem?

Because we can only be confident of team efforts when we trust each other to tell the truth in real time. And this is as true at the top of the organization as it is anywhere else.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Peter Senge, a widely regarded organizational consultant, shared a story at an American Society for Training and Development Conference. I never forgot it because it revealed such uncommon wisdom. Senge was hired by Ford Motor Company to elevate the contribution of one key company team. He sat in a few of the team meetings and recommended only one adjustment to how they worked. He recommended that, for the next six months, each team member voice a question or concern as soon as it occurred to them. To make sure that no one seemed smarter or more loyal than the next, they were encouraged not to think about it first, but just to ask the question or voice the concern as it popped into their heads. Just speak and the team will sort through the relevance of the information as it is shared.

In six months, all of the team’s measures of performance improved significantly

We have another illustration of the power of sharing vulnerability. In my view, Rudy Gulliani’s legacy after September 11, 2001 had nothing to do with what he knew for sure but what he felt for sure and how he choose to respond …..He had unanswerable questions and horrific heartache as did others, but he showed up wherever he could, to tell the truth about his pain, to bond with others in unparalleled vulnerability, and lead others into a very different future.

Recommended Actions

It is time to re-examine what constitutes a great executive meeting. My bias is that executive meetings will produce better information, decision, and relational outcomes in if they were designed explicitly to ‘unsafeguard’ thoughts, feelings, questions that relate to how leadership decisions and execution should improve for the organizational good. In other words, let’s transform the negative connotation of ‘vulnerability’ (a sense that we are open to attack or damage) into a positive. Let’s now see vulnerability as openness ---

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