On Human Connection, Vulnerability and Leadership

Years ago, as a young junior officer in the U.S. Navy, a few hundred of my peers and I shuffled into a large auditorium to hear an admiral speak. I don’t remember his name or his title. But I remember one phrase, one nugget of “wisdom” that he provided. 

He said, “Leaders are people who know stuff.” 

At the time this seemed like a simple, yet compelling insight. And it’s certainly the case that one source of people’s power and influence over others can be their expertise. In many situations, we follow those people who know the most (or at least seem to know the most) about how to solve problems. 

We also tend to follow people who have definitive answers. People who are decisive, outspoken, direct. 

But such tendencies grossly oversimplify the heart of leadership and what it means to connect with our fellow humans. 

The implication of treating leaders and leadership as being about “knowing stuff” is that to be a leader, you need to have all of the answers. You need to know more than the people you’re trying to lead. And your knowledge, therefore, gives you the right to tell those people what to do. 

Sorry, admiral, but this conceptualization of leadership is as sophisticated as my 3.5 year-old son—whom I caught wiping his nose on the couch cushion yesterday. 

Clearly, it’s important to have professional expertise and competence if you want other people to follow you. There’s a great benefit to knowing “stuff,” to building specific sets of knowledge and skill. By all means, do this. 

But leadership at a higher level is all about human connection. And that’s where another set of ideas kick in and truly start to matter. These are topics that often receive less attention than expertise or decisiveness. These include concepts such as

• Empathy.
• Compassion.
• Forgiveness.
• Vulnerability, and, dare I say … 
• Love. 

Vulnerability is particularly interesting. Being vulnerable is fundamentally about being open about who you are, your strengths and your weakness. And embracing who you are—not who you think you should be, not who other people want you to be—can be a tremendous source of confidence. It allows people to walk into the unknown, facing the ambiguity that characterizes so many of the problems in this world that require leadership. 

Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, has studied this and related topics extensively. And, as she discusses in her popular TEDx talk below, vulnerability is about not only being courageous enough to see ourselves as we truly are, but it’s also about feeling worthy. 

If you’re not one of the more than 26 million people who have already done so, take a few minutes to hear her talk. You won’t regret it. 

Being vulnerable and willing to admit that you’re not perfect opens the door to new possibilities; it opens the door to creating new opportunities in the face of uncertainty. It’s a quality that specifically requires you to admit that sometimes you don’t “know stuff,” that other people might have better ideas than you do. 

And leaders who do that, I think, are uniquely suited to lead others, particularly in times of change or adversity. They still must, of course, be willing to make tough decisions when necessary. They still must, of course, be competent and knowledgeable. 

But thinking that leadership is only about being the smartest person in the room is short-sighted. And it’s fragile. It breaks down quickly when things change. Instead, what’s becoming increasingly clear is that being an agile, adaptive leader in times of turbulence demands courage, authenticity and the confident grace that comes with embracing the unknown. 

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About Ben Baran
Ben Baran, Ph.D., is probably one of the few people in the world who is equally comfortable in a university classroom, a corporate boardroom and in full body armor carrying a U.S. government-issued M4 assault rifle. More at www.benbaran.com and www.agilityconsulting.com

For Those About to Lead

For those about to lead, I salute you. 

The vast majority of people go with the flow. Many people—even those whom we often dub “leaders”—fulfill their roles by finding out what others expect of them and meeting those expectations. This includes many heads of state—current, former and aspiring—military generals and admirals, university presidents and chief executives. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with going with the flow, depending on where the flow is headed. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing what’s expected, depending on the nature of those expectations. 

But leadership is something different. 

Leadership is about exploration, adaptation, guiding others through uncharted waters. It’s about sensing and responding quickly to the forces of change; it’s about agility. 

Consider an example from May 1804.

As the keelboat turned her bow into the stream, Lewis and his party cut themselves off from civilization. There would be no more incoming letters, no orders, no commissions, no fresh supplies, no reinforcements, nothing reaching them, until they returned.

The captains expected to be gone two years, maybe more. In all that time in whatever lay ahead of them, whatever decisions had to be made, they would receive no guidance from their superiors. This was an independent command, such as the U.S. Army had not previously seen and never would again. Lewis and Clark were as free as Columbus, Magellan, or Cook to make their mark on the sole basis of their judgments and abilities.

Such is the description of the first moments of the famous expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who, upon the orders of no one other than the third President of the United States Thomas Jefferson, embarked upon one of history’s greatest expeditions—as documented by Stephen Ambrose in his 1996 bestselling book Undaunted Courage (p. 139).   

Lewis and Clark, in their journey across the North American continent in the early 1800s, truly didn’t know what to expect. Consider that President Thomas Jefferson himself, for example, believed that the expedition might encounter mastodons upon the prairie (Ambrose, 1996, p. 91).

These two leaders and their team had only themselves, their supplies and educated guesses about what they might face. The rest they would have to deal with in real time, in an environment of complete self-reliance. 

When we truly lead, we are taking risks; we are being vulnerable—to judgment, to criticism, to both passive and active rebellion, and to failure. 

It’s simply easier and safer to do nothing. But the solution to most of what ails our organizations and our society often boils to doing things differently. And as such, the answer always requires leaders and leadership. 

And so, regardless of whether you’re setting out with an expedition party exploring a new geography or charting a new course for your team, department or organization, I salute you for giving it a shot. 

Go boldly—either out in front or by following someone else who’s doing something worthwhile—and chart new waters. 

And never forget that going boldly doesn’t have to be big or even public. Small positive disruptions, repeated over time, can indeed yield radical change.  

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About Ben Baran
Ben Baran, Ph.D., is probably one of the few people in the world who is equally comfortable in a university classroom, a corporate boardroom and in full body armor carrying a U.S. government-issued M4 assault rifle. Visit: www.benbaran.com.