Stop Trying to Be Vulnerable. Start Being Honest.

Curation is not calculation.

Let me dispel a myth: there is no enigmatic sweet spot of vulnerability that only the emotionally gifted can find. There is no secret frequency that men, in particular, are constitutionally incapable of tuning into. Vulnerability at work is not a mystical art requiring years of therapeutic excavation.

It may take energy, and it certainly requires consideration.

You need to get to know people well enough to share more than the superficial, and you must judge what levels of disclosure will work in various contexts and with different colleagues. However, like most elements of effective leadership, vulnerability is both energy-expensive and yet simple, especially when compared to the unfathomably complex work most people do every day.

The problem is not that vulnerability is hard to do; the problem is that leaders heard “vulnerability is strength” and turned it into performance art.

The Vulnerability Performance

I have watched leaders manufacture emotional moments for effect. They overshare about childhood struggles in contexts where such disclosure serves no one but themselves. They confuse authentic honesty with strategic self-revelation designed to make them appear relatable.

Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly, calls this “floodlighting”: using vulnerability as armour rather than a means of connection. “Using vulnerability is not the same thing as being vulnerable; it’s the opposite,” she writes. A vulnerability script has one hallmark quality: the discloser doesn’t ask people to “buy it.” Our ability to detect inauthenticity is far from finely tuned, but the moment vulnerability feels like a performance, it becomes counterproductive.

When leaders ask me about vulnerability, many instantly assume I am suggesting a “leader bares all” competition where they are stripped of their assets and left a broken, naked shadow of their authentic selves in front of their teams. This occurs because the myth of vulnerability as an ON/OFF switch is pervasive: you either share every deficit or nothing at all.

An uncurated approach to vulnerability can be costly and contribute to diminished credibility, but it doesn’t have to be that way, caught between sharing nothing and oversharing.

What Functional Vulnerability Actually Looks Like

Leaders fear that when they share vulnerabilities, they will lose credibility. The evidence suggests the opposite. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied found that leaders who “confess” their weaknesses are perceived as more authentic yet no less competent than those who don’t, and that employees prefer to work with leaders who “admit” their shortcomings. Critically, the authenticity gains only emerge when disclosure is voluntary rather than required, and are more pronounced when made by higher-status individuals.

However, I would add the following to that research: words like “admit” and “confess” often hinder disclosure and authentic vulnerability. Where disclosure is simply valuable and personally significant, “sharing” is the word I prefer. Where a colleague or leader talks about a mistake they’ve made, “acknowledge” is good enough, especially when accompanied by appropriate contrition and a commitment not to repeat the error.

When the goal is to inspire performance and empowerment, vulnerability is best shared when it is well-curated, contextually valuable, and when the group has earned the disclosure through its consistent approach to psychological safety.

Well-Curated Disclosure

In most organisational environments, vulnerability disclosures must be reasoned and considered, not knee-jerk responses to external stimuli. To be clear: curation is not calculation. Calculated vulnerability is Machiavellian, a tool for extracting trust you have not earned. Curated vulnerability is the opposite: it is ensuring that something true is expressed in a way that serves the relationship rather than overwhelms it. The content remains honest; the delivery is considered. The difference is whether you are managing the truth or managing how you communicate it.

This means:

Measured. Enough information to grant insight to others, but not so much as to overwhelm. The amount you can share without overwhelming someone grows over time, as the strength and authenticity of the relationship deepen.

Objective. Delivered in a way that doesn’t over- or underemphasise the importance of what’s being shared. Avoid hyperbole and the “slippery slope” narrative. I have little patience for slippery slope arguments. They are intellectually lazy, more often used to justify inaction or to prevent people from taking harmless actions, and in the case of functional vulnerability, often incredibly useful but simply not desired by those in power.

Appropriate. Not everything you have is relevant to share in every environment. Sharing a deeply personal moral failing with your team is more likely to inspire contempt and a desire to escape to another leader than the authenticity you were hoping for.

For the avoidance of doubt: “I don’t have an answer for that yet” is more valuable than a ten-minute story about your childhood struggles. This is about being real without being self-indulgent.

Contextually Valuable

Not everything we think to share is valuable in every moment. Some thought about why you are sharing is important for that sharing to be seen as authentic rather than transparently manipulative.

Consider three categories of contextual vulnerability:

Technical. Sharing specific gaps in your knowledge with an additional request for support when you suspect others have insights they haven’t yet voiced. “I’m not confident in my understanding of how this regulation affects our approach. Who here has more experience with this?”

Strategic. Stating where you are concerned about your ability to scrutinise a project because of your blind spots, perspective, or fixed-mindset thinking. You might ask others to play devil’s advocate or share views from other perspectives, even if they aren’t their own.

Personal. Sharing that you are human in an environment where others may know you only transactionally or assume your omniscience because of your track record. This may mean measured, objective and appropriate sharing of small, humanising personal factors. I might share my love of Star Wars, e-bikes (which are a legitimate form of exercise!), and beach holidays, allowing easy entry into a more human space without a significant risk of interpersonal friction.

In my opinion, technical and strategic categories are essential elements of being a responsible colleague. They are also how leaders initiate the trust-building cycle. When you acknowledge a gap in your knowledge or invite challenge to your thinking, you demonstrate that honesty is safe here. Personal disclosure follows once that foundation exists. Delivering on and leading in such a way that other colleagues can begin to share aspects of themselves in the personal category is how you build sustainably high-performing teams.

Earned Disclosure

People misunderstand disclosure. It’s not permission to speak, and it’s not the right to know. People earn the right to know things about you that may be vulnerable.

This goes beyond technical or strategic disclosure, where colleagues owe it to their teams to acknowledge and own their gaps, uncertainty and missteps. Where the deeper, more meaningful and more personal elements are concerned, colleagues disclose when they feel their team has earned the right to know.

To use a wonderful old English word I learned 30 years ago by sticking a pin in a dictionary, a person discloses what behooves them.

Several behaviours encourage this:

Empathy and respect. Queer people who hadn’t previously shared their sexuality at work often speak about listening to straight colleagues speak kindly about LGBTQ+ issues, or using inclusive language, as a reason they chose to share. “They earned the right to know.”

Reciprocal disclosure. Learning about others is contingent on being willing to share about yourself. Indicate your curiosity for others by sharing small things about yourself, in the hope this will be reciprocated up to, and not beyond, any personal boundaries.

Respecting boundaries. When the point of reluctance to share more is reached, gratitude rather than frustration is the answer. Pushing for more disclosure when someone has clearly reached their limit destroys trust.

Genuine cognitive engagement. Too many people ask questions, even intimate ones, then mentally check out: their eyes glaze over, they glance at their phone, or they look off into the distance. This disengagement means future disclosure is far less likely. My guiding principle: don’t ask if you don’t care.

Service versus selfish curiosity. If you interrogate why you want to know something, it reveals whether the interaction will be positive. If the answer to “Why am I asking this?” is “Just because” or “I just want to know,” you are likely entering a space where you’ll be perceived as imposing on your colleague. If you want to know, in service of building a more effective or respectful working relationship, then you’re likely on to a winner.

A note of caution for leaders: the same technical or strategic disclosure that builds credibility for one colleague can damage another. A senior partner who admits uncertainty may be seen as refreshingly honest; a junior associate from an underrepresented background who does the same may have their competence questioned. This is not fair, but it is real.

Curated personal disclosure, the kind that breaks down barriers of unfamiliarity, can help normalise responses to technical and strategic honesty from colleagues who do not look like those in power. But if, as a leader, you punish disclosure, whether through overt criticism or subtle withdrawal of opportunity, you teach your team that honesty is unsafe. Some will stop sharing altogether, and you will lose access to their insights, their concerns, and eventually their discretionary effort. The environment you create determines the disclosure you receive.

Putting This Into Practice

Two exercises from my recent book, It’s Not Magic, may help:

Vulnerability Mapping

• Identify three current work challenges.

• For each, mark:

  • Where am I uncertain?

  • Who might know more than I do?

  • What framing could I use to invite their input without diminishing my role?

Reveal, Don’t Collapse

• Think of a past instance when you expressed anxiety or doubt, or a current instance you’d like to share.

• Re/write it now in a more objective and specific manner, preserving honesty while maintaining leadership presence.

For more worked examples and exercises on functional vulnerability, see Chapter 5 of It’s Not Magic.

The second exercise addresses a crucial distinction: vulnerability is not the same as helplessness. It is not inauthentic to curate how you present doubt and knowledge gaps to your team. Doubt, fear and anxiety can all be genuinely conveyed as long as they are objective and specific rather than hyperbolic and holistic. In high-stakes situations, honest uncertainty is most effective when paired with visible effort: “I don’t have an answer yet, but here’s how we’re working toward one” lands very differently from “I don’t know what to do.”

Share how you are concerned about a particular element of a plan, not a general lack of faith in the overall strategy. Share that you experience performance anxiety in particular contexts, educating your team that some anxiety is a key component of preparation for high performance. Should you experience imposter phenomenon, sharing that can be empowering to people who regard “someone like you” as immune, putting their own self-doubt into context.

The Real Skill

Vulnerability cannot be manufactured, and pretending you have a gap where there is none is inauthentic to the extreme and will appear manipulative and toxic to trust. A global software company I worked with had a senior leader who, in an attempt to be “collaborative and empowering,” asked open questions to which they already knew the answers. Far from creating the unified team they’d hoped for, it allowed frustration to build. In 360 feedback, the ask was clear: “Just tell me when you know the answer, and let me shine when I know more than you.”

The ordinary skill here isn’t in performing vulnerability, it’s allowing for straightforward honesty about limitations, missteps, and what you genuinely don’t know.

It is saying, “I haven’t worked through this yet”, when you haven’t.

It is acknowledging, “I got that wrong” when you did.

It is asking, “Can you explain that again? I want to make sure I’ve understood”, when you’re confused.

These are not dramatic acts of self-revelation. They are simple, repeated moments of honesty that, over time, build the trust that makes deeper disclosure possible.

In The Promises of Giants, I wrote that leaders who present as invulnerable often attract sycophants, not teammates, which leads to brittle decisions and poor crisis performance. The antidote is not theatrical vulnerability. It is consistent, curated honesty.

Be transparent. But pace yourself.

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