247: Vulnerability in Startup Leadership

Steli Efti:

Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah. Today, we’re going to talk about vulnerability in startups, especially  when you’re in a leadership role, or a founder role, or a manager role. This  is something where it’s a topic, it’s one of those kinds of Steli and I  like to just jump into. We jump into, actually, all the topics, but this one  especially. I think neither of us know where it’s going to go. There’s a motorcycle  driving by outside, and so I feel vulnerable because of that. Anyways, I think this  is an important topic. This is a very useful topic. Vulnerability is such a big  word. You know what I’m going to do, Steli. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Steli Efti:

God damn it. I was just about to do it to beat you, but I  can’t out-Hiten a Hiten, so I’ll let you do it.

Hiten Shah:

“Vulnerability is the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked  or harmed either physically or emotionally.” Wow.

Steli Efti:

Say that one more time.

Hiten Shah:

Absolutely. “The quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or  harmed either physically or emotionally.”

Steli Efti:

I think what we’re going to talk about is going to be much more emotionally  than physically . You never know, but you never know.

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah.

Steli Efti:

It’s usually more of the emotional type of attack that we’re talking about. But it’s  such an interesting topic, because I do think that, especially in leadership, people want to,  they want to communicate strength. They want to display strength. They want to be strong,  and they want people that are following them to feel like, “This person knows where  they’re going. They’re strong, and they’re knowledgeable. They’re going to lead us to victory, or  to whatever the goal is that we’re all trying get to together.” So, to putting  yourself in a vulnerable position in front of your team and displaying weakness or potential  weakness, or opening yourself up for emotional harm or aggression, is something that people are  not comfortable with. Right? Founders or some kind of manager or leader position in a  startup, you don’t want to expose yourself in a way that shows people that you’re  weak, or you have doubt, or you don’t know what to do. But we know  that there’s true power in vulnerability. I think that today this is more and more  a topic, and we see more and more leaders that are making themselves vulnerable. Maybe  way back 10, 20, 30 years ago, this was not even a topic, and it’s  becoming more and more one, so we definitely want to chat with you about this.  Now that we’ve kind of talked a little bit about what vulnerability is, do we  think it’s valuable? Should leaders in startups, should they be making themselves vulnerable at times?  And why is it valuable? Why should they do it? Then, how? Let’s explore that idea a little bit further.

Hiten Shah:

I think my take on it today is that vulnerability is a big part of  leadership. It’s something that it’s much different than maybe back in the day when you  could be more of a dictator. You thought telling people what to do was the way to go. These days, people want to understand how you feel, because that helps  them understand how they should feel about the business, about whatever the initiatives are that  you’re trying to do. I think vulnerability is something where like when people think of  leadership, I don’t think they commonly think of vulnerability as something that’s like common. I  mean in my case, I would say that what forced me to understand this is  when the company had real challenges that required the whole team to focus on a  problem and a real big problem. I’ve talked about a bunch of those problems. There’s  been points in my companies where raising money was challenging. So, I could either lie  to team, smile to them, or tell them, “Hey. This is hard, and here’s why.  Here’s what’s going on.” Or we had a big class action lawsuit at one of  my companies, and the vulnerability was like even if I tried to hide it, you’d  see it on my face. In that case, it was more like I didn’t want  to tell anyone and freak them out and say, “I’m scared.” Right?

Steli Efti:

Yep.

Hiten Shah:

But, the vulnerability there was like, “Look, this happened on my 30th birthday, so that  sucks. Right then is when we heard about it, and we started dealing with it.  It’s us and our customers that are getting sued, and it’s our fault.” So right  there I just said, “Our fault.” So that’s vulnerability right there. The team could be  like, “What do you mean it’s our fault? What did we do?” You know what  I mean? “No, it’s our fault like we did something, like we actually did something  bad here. We didn’t do it on purpose. We did it accidentally in this case,  but it was bad. It’s our fault. These people are getting sued because of us.”  Right?

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

So I think there’s a way you can communicate where you’re actually admitting, one is  admitting fault is a strong level of vulnerability, because nobody wants to admit fault. I  didn’t say I was wrong in that case. I said we were, because that was  the truth. Now, if I were wrong in that case, I would have said, “I  was wrong.” I would have taken the ownership over it. Because ultimately, if you’re a  leader the ownership’s yours. Nobody else owns the problem except you. You know what I  mean? And I don’t mean to say it’s not, you know, they couldn’t do something  about it, or they don’t feel a sense of ownership, but the ultimate buck stops  at somebody is the leader, the manager, the person who heads up the department, the  person who runs the company, or the founders who have the most equity, the most  responsibility, the most at stake if you want to call it that. So, I think I’ll throw that out, and say, to me, that’s how I learned that vulnerability’s the  only way, because otherwise, people just start asking questions and there’s a lot of rumors.  So to me, vulnerability actually prevents rumors, prevents back channeling inside of a company when  you can literally put yourself out there and say, “Look. What I’m going to say,  many of you might not like, but that’s okay. I have to say it. It’s  the truth.”

Steli Efti:

I love that. I think that points to another thing, which is authenticity, and with  that, trust. When you make yourself vulnerable, when you show to your team, externally, how  you internally feel about something, it builds trust, which means that people come to understand  that they can rely on whatever you’re saying to being the truth. Then, they have  to spend a lot less time trying to interpret what you’re saying to try to  discover the truth. They know our founder or our CEO, whoever the leaders in this  company, “What this person’s saying, I’m not concerned. I believe that. I’m not going to  even second guess that, because I know that when he or she is concerned, she  came out and said, ‘I’m very concerned. I’m super troubled on, super stressed out on  very, like this is a big problem and it pisses me off.'” So, if a  leader has a track record of honestly communicating what’s going on and being vulnerable at  times, the team will have to spend a lot less energy trying to figure out  what’s really going on, “really going on.” They’re just going to be trusting what they  hear.

Hiten Shah:

I like that.

Steli Efti:

Because they know this person is not afraid to show them when they are weak  or when they’re vulnerable. I think that the amount of time teams waste on not  trusting each other and not trusting the leadership, and the leadership not trusting the team  with the truth either, this is a not making yourself vulnerable is also a trust  issue. You’re not trusting your team to be able to handle that. You’re not trusting  your team to be able to be okay with that and still follow you. So,  you’re creating all this mistrust that now is wasting all this energy instead of solving the problem, or doing the work that’s necessary. Now, everybody’s wasting energy trying to uncover  “What is really going on at this company?” I think that’s kind of a big  powerful thing that happens when you as a leader are showing that you’re ready to  make yourself vulnerable. This is going to hopefully translate down to the team being comfortable  being vulnerable back to you. When something went really, really horribly wrong, that person might  be much more willing to step up and make themselves vulnerable in front of the  team or in front of you as the leader, versus if they’ve never seen that’s  an acceptable thing within the company. They also are going to try to hide that.  Now, this is creating all kinds of issues, so I think vulnerabilities are crucial part  of honesty and trust in a company, because nobody always feels amazing, strong, and full  of clarity. No normal human being feels like that during a startup, during the roller  coaster of a startup journey. There’s going to be weak moments, and it’s okay to  be weak and to display that weakness. Now having said that, I think it’s important  and we’ve talked about this many times I think in the past and in other  episodes, it’s important how you’re vulnerable. Because I think that some people might also misunderstand,  you can misunderstand that. We talked about this is episode 128 “Crisis Management for Startups,”  and in episode 214 “How to Communicate with Customers During a Crisis.” I think that  vulnerable doesn’t mean “I’m just going to be weak and put it on my team  to pull me up and to figure out the solution to problems.” It’s not just  like you being a whiny baby saying, “Oh my God, everything is horrible. I don’t  know what to do. Why are we having a class action lawsuit? This is so  terrible. I’m overwhelmed right now, and I just don’t know what to do.” That’s not  the way to be vulnerable in front of your team. Would you agree with this  Hiten?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah. Of course. Don’t do that.

Steli Efti:

Don’t do that. Because no, I mean, some people might hear us and go, “Oh,  I’m going to be an amazing leader that’s going to display vulnerability, but just allow  my emotions to run wild whenever I feel like it.” All right.

Hiten Shah:

That’s like faking it.

Steli Efti:

Yeah, there you go.

Hiten Shah:

Right? You’re still a leader, you’re still like having to, you know, people still come  to you with the problems or they should. People still rely on you. They need  to trust you. If you start spilling all your emotions around, they’re going to be  taken on an emotional roller coaster. I could have said, “Hey. We’re fucked.” You know  what I mean? “We’re screwed.”

Steli Efti:

Yeah, we’re screwed.

Hiten Shah:

“This is not easy. This is not going to work. We might not make it.  Everything, it’s just bad.” But then everyone would have quit.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

At times during that period where things were really bad, sometimes I was just like,  “Oh, this really sucks. I don’t really know what’s going to happen,” but I’m not  going to tell anyone that. It’s not that I was lying to them by saying  I don’t know what’s going to happen. We definitely commuted, “We don’t know what’s going  to happen,” but you don’t do it in a way where you’re showing all your  emotional baggage. Here’s the funny thing, this gets a little bit into like personal development  if you want to call it that, but if you’re spilling your emotions at other people, you’re actually causing them a lot of pain, even yourself before you actually compose  yourself. This isn’t about being emotional. This is about being vulnerable, being open to criticism  when you speak, you know, being ready for it even, if you’re going to say  something a little like vulnerable. That’s the definition. It isn’t like, “I’m going to go  spill my emotions, and then people are going to be like, “Oh, he’s an emotional  mess.” No, that’s not the kind of criticism that you should even consider. This is  more like you’re telling something, it’s like to me, vulnerability and being genuine are really  related. Everything you said about like, “This builds trust,” and, “The team has to think  less,” those are all so accurate. But if you’re being vulnerable by just spilling your  emotions at them, you’re actually not building trust, and they’re not actually thinking less, they’re  thinking like, “You’re crazy. You’re just crazy.” You don’t want to come across like you’re  crazy. You don’t want to tell them to wake up every morning unhappy, because I  don’t know where this business is going to go tomorrow. You know what I mean?  I don’t know if it’s over. That’s just a thought you had in your head;  that doesn’t mean it’s the truth, that doesn’t mean that that’s vulnerability. That’s just absurdity.  Sorry for the rant, but like, wow. Like no, people should not be spilling their  emotions and yelling at everybody all the time. Although, I will tell you, I will  tell you, there’s an interesting exercise, it’s kind of related to vulnerability where, let’s say  for a day, ideally a week, you just say everything that comes in your head,  when it comes in your head.

Steli Efti:

A week where you just communicate instantly what you’re thinking to people around you?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What would happen? It’s just an exercise. I’m not saying you should  do that forever, but it’s something that might even help you understand vulnerability, because many  of us are just stuck. I’m not saying do this with your team. I’m just  saying if you want to really understand vulnerability viscerally, and the difference between being too  emotional and sharing and it being fake, versus it being genuine, that exercise would teach you that, because as you’re just putting your thoughts out there, there is a vulnerability  to that, naturally. That could help somebody who feels like they don’t know how to  do this actually learn how to do it, because you’re basically just putting yourself out  there, saying exactly what you think whenever you think it. Also, your personality kind of  comes out a lot more, which is a whole nother, for most of us, a  problem.

Steli Efti:

I love that exercise. And if somebody that’s listening right now, if you have a  strong reaction, like a fear reaction, “My god, I could never do this,” maybe this  is the exercise for you. I usually look for those strong reactions in myself as  a compass for what I need to do next. I’ll say one other thing. The  way that I would think about this, I think that vulnerability could be a massive  display of strength, because it’s not just showing people how you really feel in a  moment where that might include some weakness, but it’s showing people how you deal with  that weakness. So, there’s a difference, to just give you an example, let’s say I’m  in the gym, and I have to do some kind of an exercise where I  have to do 20 repetitions of something. Let’s say after the 15th repetition, it becomes really, really, really difficult for me. I think vulnerability, if you have your team around  you, vulnerability is showing people how freaking hard it is, how fucking painful this is  right now, and showing you emotion. If you want to scream, if you want to  shout, you do that. You show them that it’s hard; you don’t try to pretend  that, “Oh, this is so easy. Look at my . I could do much more.”  No, you show them at the 16th, 17th repetition, that you’re in pain, that this  is tough, but you also show them, that you keep pushing as much as you  can, and you’re going to get to 20 repetitions, and then the team around you  might get inspired to start encouraging you and shouting to you, “Just four more, three,  two,” like, they want to give you energy, they want to help you. They see  that this is tough for you, but they also see that you’re pushing, and that  you’re giving it your all, and that you’re going to make it happen. That’s a  different scenario than you pretending there’s nothing going on, but it’s also a different scenario that after the 15th rep, you’re putting down the weight or whatever it is you’re  doing, and looking at the team and going, “Oh my god, my arms are hurting.  I don’t think I can do this. Oh man, this is tough. Maybe I try  it again tomorrow,” and then you rely on the team to tell you, “No, dude,  please, come on. Don’t give up.” That’s a different dynamic. If I just give up  after 15 reps, now, I’m not vulnerable; I’m weak. If I show the team that  this is very fucking hard and that I’m in pain, but I still push through  it, I’m vulnerable; I’m showing them that this is really challenging for me, right, I’m  really struggling right now. But I’m also showing them that I’m strong, and that I’m okay showing that weakness and that this is tough, but I’m also displaying how I’m  dealing with challenges, how I’m dealing with pain, how I’m dealing with a situation when  I’m in stress, and how I’m dealing with it is that I’m going to push  through it, that I’m going to manage it, that I’m going to toughen through it,  that I’m going to take responsibility, that I’m going to find a way. And I  do think that is a big difference. We’re not telling you please be weak and  let the team handle all the pressure and carry you around, we’re telling you be  honest, and when there’s moments of crisis or moments where you feel shitty or stressed  or when you’re in doubt, it’s okay to show that to communicate that. But it’s  not okay to give up, it’s not okay to put it on the shoulders of  your team. You still have to say, “Okay, we don’t know what’s going to happen  next. We’re in a really tough spot, but here’s what I think we need to  do next. Here’s what we have to do to get through this.” And then being  okay with people giving you negative feedback, or telling you that your plan sucks and  they have another idea of what to do, and being honest in that discourse. But  showing weakness in leadership is not a good idea. Showing vulnerability can be incredibly powerful,  and transformational for the way that a crisis is being managed, but also for the  way that what kind of a culture you foster within your company.

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, absolutely. I think culture … This really relates a lot to culture, and what  you want to foster. It’s like such a interesting world we live in. I don’t  think vulnerability was as important many, many years ago. Now, just vulnerability creates culture, or  not. And also with so many startups out there that are so risky, I think vulnerability becomes important for people to hang on for as long as it takes for  the business to work.

Steli Efti:

Absolutely. All right. This is it from us for this episode. We’d love to hear  from you. You guys know already, Hiten and I, we love to hear from you.  If you’re struggling with vulnerability, if you’re at really pivotal moment where you displayed vulnerability  and it made a big positive difference, or negative one for that instance, just get  in tough with us and share your stories, your insights. We’d love to hear from  you. Gmail.com. Steli we always love to hear from you, and we’ll hear you very  soon.

Hiten Shah:

Later.