Speaker 1
is really exciting
Speaker 2
and I'm excited to chat with you especially on the topic of vulnerability which I know is the topic of your new book. So before we get into it can you give us a bit of an overview on your new book and then we'll get into how vulnerability can play a role in negotiation.
Speaker 1
Sure so the theme of the book is don't be vulnerable at work. It can actually hurt you far more than it can help you. And I know that sounds weird for a book called, Leading with Vulnerability, but the big distinction that I make is that, especially in the workplace, when you're vulnerable, really what you're doing is you're exposing the gaps that you have. Gap in intelligence, gap in experience, gap in emotion, gap in whatever it might be, competence. But you're basically telling everybody around you, here's what I can't do or don't know, or here's the area that I'm struggling with. Now, in your personal life, it's clear why something like that might make sense because it helps build trust and relationship and connections with friends, with family members, with your significant other. But at work, we have a different dynamic. You have a boss, you have customers, projects, deadlines, you're being paid a salary. And so if you just go to your boss and say, hey, I'm so sorry I messed this up, I'm so sorry I screwed up this project, which is vulnerable. Your boss at the time is not just going to look at you and say, oh, gee, thank you for telling me. Your boss is going to say, well, you know, I appreciate you coming and telling me that you made this mistake. But look, the customer is still not happy. The project is still not done, the deadlines are still not met, and the revenue goals have still not been achieved. So in other words, what are you doing about it? And that's the distinction between just being vulnerable versus leading with vulnerability. Leading with vulnerability is not just exposing a gap that you have, but it's demonstrating what you're trying to do to close that gap. So in the case of making a mistake, instead of just saying, I made a mistake, I'm sorry, you would say, I made a mistake, I'm sorry, but here's what I learned from that mistake that I made. And here's what I'm going to do to make sure that that mistake will never happen again. So you're adding the competence, the leadership piece to the vulnerability piece. We see this in our personal lives all the time, right? If somebody comes to you and says, hey, I want to lose weight, I want to stop smoking, I want to be a better negotiator. You're not just going to say, well, great, good for you. You're going to say, oh, what are you doing about it? How are you trying to be a better negotiator? How are you trying to lose weight? Like what do you demonstrate what you're trying to do to close that gap? And that is
Speaker 2
a really, really important distinction between those two. I am so glad you wrote this book, Jacob. This is so necessary because we can all see the value of vulnerability. And it has become almost a buzzword in the employment space or just in general. And I think the problem is that a lot of times people will say that without having a full understanding of what that really means. And then the implications of what vulnerability done wrong could do and now for those people who are listening And they're red flags are coming up with their mind. They're saying for the last 10 15 years all people have been telling me to do is be vulnerable Can you speak to the skeptics out here who might say I don't know Jacob? I'm not quite sure. Oh, yeah Don't
Speaker 1
be vulnerable again that goes back to the point right of I think for many years We've used vulnerability as a way to justify poor performance. So whenever we struggle with something, whenever we're not achieving our goals, we've been using vulnerability as a way to justify to explain why we're not meeting our goals. And that's not really ownership. That's not really leadership. That is simply making excuses. And so, broadly speaking, can talk about why is leading with vulnerability so important? Well because it does two things. Number one, it acknowledges that you can improve and get better. And number two is it keeps you accountable for actually getting better. So when you think about it in the context of those two things, let's imagine a scenario where you work for an organization. Can any employee or any leader say, hey you know what, I'm perfect the way I am. I don't need to get better. No. So vulnerability is relevant because everybody can get better at whatever it is that they're doing. You can be a better dad. You can be a better leader. You can be a better engineer, a negotiator, whatever it is. But if you don't acknowledge that you have that gap to begin with, then you're never going to work on trying to close that gap. You're just gonna stay where you are. So the concept of leading with vulnerability is important because it keeps you a growing and developing and becoming a better version of you. Now again, it's not purely just the vulnerability piece because that's acknowledging that you can get better. But the leadership and the competence piece is what are you actually doing to get better? So it's kind of two steps. Yes, I can get better. And here's where, you know, I have some areas and some gaps. And here's what I'm doing to close them. And again, who would want to work for anybody inside of an organization that doesn't acknowledge or take steps on either of those two things, it wouldn't make any sense. And you have to remember that let's say you're comfortable with where you are, and you say, you know'm good I'm already a senior leader or middle of a leader. I am where I want to be in my career I'm just gonna stay where I am well that might sound like a potential option But you have to remember that the world around you changes and so you are where you are and you might be content with that But as the world around you changes what's gonna happen is by default you're gonna start to fall behind because you're staying stagnant but the world around you keeps changing. And so if you stay where you are while something is changing by default you over year over year over year you start to become a worse version of you a less capable version of you a less skilled version of you. So you have to update and upgrade yourself the same way that you do the software on your phone or on your computer. And think about it, whenever you update any software it says bug fixes and improvements. So yeah, you too need to acknowledge that there are some bugs that you have, that there are some improvements that you can make and go out and make them and go out and fix those bugs. But I mean, imagine if you were using software your phone or your computer, you know, from a decade ago, you know, from 15 years ago, you know, it wouldn't be functional, it wouldn't be able to operate in the world that we're in now. And similarly, you wouldn't be able to operate or function if you stay where you are in the world around you changes.
Speaker 2
Think about what I love about this is the specificity with it, because we're recognizing that in the past, it was an incomplete understanding of vulnerability. And now this leads us to accountability, higher performance, which puts us in a position to improve as people and as professionals, and then also puts our organization in a position where it can grow as well, because the people and professionals are growing and taking accountability. I'm smiling because the timing of this is perfect. We have a relationship with LinkedIn. We have like 47 courses on LinkedIn learning. 47? Yeah, 47. Damn. Yes. We love LinkedIn and we're on their podcast network too. And the last project we did was a LinkedIn certificate. So it's the only certificate they have in negotiation. And so we partnered with them. We're excited for it. But we realized that at the beginning of the project, we did not do a good job. Just flat out, we didn't do a good job of communicating and delivering. And so what we did is after we completed the project, and it was done, and we can see thousands of people going through it, which is great, we called a meeting with LinkedIn. And so at the beginning of the meeting, they were saying, okay, well, we're interested to see what you want to talk about. Well, and we said, well, what we want to do is we want to give you feedback on ourselves. This is what happened. This is what was the impact it had on you. We apologize for that. And this is, these are the changes that we made on the interior to make sure that this won't happen again in the future. So we want to have this conversation to see if there's any other vulnerabilities that you see in us that we might not have seen. and let's talk through that. And they were blown away. They were really shocked. But again, we weren't just saying, hey, we made mistakes, please pity us. We're saying we see the mistakes, and we have done these things to address those mistakes. And our goal is to keep on getting better. And so we can see how this strengthens the relationship and also improves confidence because we're taking accountability for performance and what we want to do different next time.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you have to be able to do that. Otherwise, what's the point? Acknowledging a mistake is you want to have a psychological safety to be able to do that. That's one thing, but how you actually go about doing it is another thing.