184
Episode 184 31 min
Leadership Futurist Jacob Morgan Interviewed 100 CEOs and 14,000 Employees: Here’s What He Learned
Jacob Morgan, Leadership Futurist and Author
00:00
00:00
A leader who intentionally opens themselves up to the potential of emotional harm—that's vulnerability. Taking action to create a positive outcome when possible—that's leadership. You have to be able to do both of those things.
In this episode
By adopting one straightforward strategy, leaders can achieve up to six times higher approval ratings from their employees.
Embrace vulnerability.
However, this goes beyond being honest about mistakes or uncertainties. Jacob Morgan explains that it’s about coupling that openness with competence and actionable plans for improvement— turning vulnerability into a strategic asset for growth.
Jacob Morgan is a 5x bestselling author, respected keynote speaker, and professionally trained futurist. His latest book ‘Leading with Vulnerability’ explores the tangible advantages of vulnerable leadership and offers practical tips to embody this quality. With his extensive background in advising the world’s top organizations, Jacob has established himself as a leading voice on leadership, employee experience, and the future of work.
In episode #184, Jacob unpacks how vulnerability can be a superpower for leaders, enabling them to build trust and transform their organizations. Drawing from his comprehensive research of interviews with over 100 CEOs and a survey of 14,000 employees, Jacob explores the “vulnerable leader equation,” the importance of learning proactively from failure, and the organizational benefits of vulnerability.
Tune in to hear about Jacob’s expert insights on how vulnerability can be your greatest strength in leadership!
Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the podcast with your colleagues.
06:20
The vulnerable leader equation
12:52
Proactively learning from failure
18:37
Leading with vulnerability
25:02
The ROI of embracing vulnerability org-wide
29:50
Building trust through vulnerability
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Read Jacob’s bestseller Leading with Vulnerability
- Check out Jacob’s website
- Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn
- Follow Jacob on X
- Check out Fellow’s Meeting Guidelines
- Subscribe to the Supermanagers TLDR newsletter
Transcript
So Jacob, let’s talk about this new book.
You’re obviously the author of five books, and the latest one is called ‘Leading with Vulnerability.’ Why don’t we start with why did you write this book, what compelled you to, you know, put this knowledge out into the world?
Jacob Morgan 01:23
A few things. One came from the business side, and one came from the personal side. On the business side, when I was working on my previous book, that future leader, I would ask a lot of these CEOs, what are the most important mindsets and skill sets for current and aspiring leaders, and they would all tell me, you know, things are right, emotional intelligence would come up a lot, vulnerability would come up a lot as well. But on the other hand, these CEOs would tell me that while they understood the power and importance of vulnerability, there was a lot of just you could say, lack of clarity around how to make it come to life inside of an organization. Because if you’re vulnerable in your personal life, it’s very different than if you’re vulnerable at work. Because at work, you have a different dynamic, you have a hierarchy, you have a boss, you have leaders, employees, you have salaries, you have benefits, you have customers and deadlines, it’s just different. And so the way that I would be vulnerable with a spouse or a significant other or friend, versus the way that I would be vulnerable with somebody who works with me, or somebody that I work for, would be different. And so a lot of these CEOs acknowledged that there’s a very different dynamic there, and they weren’t sure how to approach it in that work context. And the second thing was that these leaders were also telling you that vulnerability for a leader is not the same as it is for everybody else. Because as a leader, not only do you have that different dynamic, but you are now responsible for the dollars and cents. You are responsible for the project and the teams and the customers and the employees. So it’s different for you. So that was one thing that a lot of these executives were mentioning in the second was that the employees that worked for the CEOs were asking the CEOs, on the one hand, to be competent, and strong and visionary, you know, to be the leaders that employees could trust and know that they would be able to get them to a successful destination. But on the other hand, these employees were also wanting their leaders to be comfortable talking about their feelings and emotions and struggles and fears. And how do you reconcile these two seemingly opposing perspectives? And CEOs were confused—which leader am I supposed to be? Strong, visionary, competent, or more vulnerable, talking about my feelings and emotions and struggles? That is a big challenge, right? Because they seem to be like two different opposing paths. So I thought it would be very interesting to explore that and give people a little bit of a blueprint and a guidebook for how to approach vulnerability at work, but to do it in the right way. Because if you do it the wrong way, it can cause far more harm than good. On the personal side, I never believed in vulnerability. My parents came from the former USSR. And even though my mom tried to model emotional vulnerability and openness, I grew up as a young boy emulating and watching my dad. And he always believed there’s no such thing as a trophy for second place. Always be mentally and physically strong. To this day, when I go to visit my parents, my dad will ask me how many pushups I can do, and it’ll kind of challenge me to do a push-up and a sit-up contest. That’s us. So, I grew up thinking vulnerability is dumb. It’s stupid. It’s not for me, and I shouldn’t be bothering with this. And that’s how I lived my entire adult life up until a few years ago when I had a series of panic attacks. And these panic attacks, it turned out, were a direct result of the fact that I had written and committed to writing a book about vulnerability, which is something that I didn’t believe in. And so, as my brain was coming to grips with the fact that I had just committed to doing this, you know, it was one of the large factors that helped contribute to a series of panic attacks. There was kind of the personal side and the business side there that really showed me that this is an important book I had to write.
Aydin Mirzaee 04:51
What a compelling story, and so it’s interesting because the way that you went about this, you actually interviewed 100 worldwide CEOs in order to get your take on all of this stuff. And is that like the usual way that you approach books? Or was this a unique take on approaching this book?
Jacob Morgan 05:06
You know, I get very frustrated with a lot of business books that are out there. And there are some fantastic business books out there that have gotten very, very famous. But oftentimes, I find it when I read these business books, they’re either based on maybe one or two companies or something anecdotal, or he said, or she said, and it’s not something that is very actionable for a lot of people. And so not everybody is an apple, not everybody’s a Microsoft, not everybody’s a Steve Jobs, nor should they be a Steve Jobs, not everybody’s an Elon Musk, nor should they be an Elon Musk. So I wanted to bring together and I’m a big fan of doing this, bringing together qualitative and quantum data from very diverse perspectives. So, I interviewed 100 CEOs from different parts of the world in different industries. I surveyed 14,000 employees with a leadership firm called DDI, globally. And the whole point of this is to get a lot of data and look for the common patterns and trends that keep coming up, that are applicable to anybody in any industry in any company. Therefore, when anybody’s reading this, whether you are in the United States, or in Italy, or Australia, or even in Japan, you can see that there are things that you can apply into how you work and how you lead. So, I’ve done this for the past several books of mine, bringing together both qualitative and quantitative data.
Aydin Mirzaee 06:20
I love it. So why don’t we dig in a little bit about this topic. So, one of the things that you talk about is the vulnerable leader equation. And what is that is that mostly, I guess, like the dilemma that most leaders had that you were just explaining, where on the one hand, you have to be the visionary and the strong leader. And on the other hand, people also want you to be vulnerable. Or Is that referring to something else?
Jacob Morgan 06:44
Something else. So the whole concept of a vulnerable leader equation stems from the fact that we, I think, our teaching, I don’t wanna say completely the wrong thing, but partially the wrong thing inside of a lot of our organizations. And that is, vulnerability is good. You know, the concept of psychological safety that Amy Edmondson pioneered is really about creating a space in which you feel comfortable to come forward with mistakes and challenges, and being able to talk about struggles and stuff like that. But it’s another question to feel safe to do that versus how you actually do that in the right way. And so, for example, I think teaching employees, well, just come forward with any mistake that you make, or just come forward and talk about any challenges that you’re trying to overcome, is not effective. And again, it’s precisely because at work, we have a very different dynamic. So vulnerability you can think of as doing or saying something, it exposes a gap, that you have a gap, a knowledge gap, and experience a gap and emotion, it’s basically, I’m struggling with this, and I’m telling you what it is that I’m struggling with. Now, you want to have an environment where you feel safe to do that. But on the other hand, you don’t just want to do that. Leading with vulnerability is being able to talk about the gaps that you have, but also demonstrating what you’re trying to do to close those gaps. And this is especially crucial inside of a business environment. So, a very classic example of this can be seen when people make mistakes at work. And you might go to your boss or your leader and say, hey, you know what, I’m really sorry, I made a mistake here. And, of course, it’s great that you feel safe, that you can go to your leader and say that, but the fact that you’re just coming forward and saying that you made a mistake doesn’t really do much. It doesn’t make you look very competent because you made a mistake, you screwed up. It doesn’t create a positive perception of you in the eyes of your leader, who basically says, ‘well, I gave you something, and you messed it up; why should I give you anything again if you’re gonna mess it up?’ And so instead of just saying, I’m really sorry, I made a mistake, the way that you lead with vulnerability there is you say, I’m really sorry, I made a mistake. Here’s what I learned from the mistake that I made. And here are three things that I’m going to do going forward to make sure that mistake doesn’t happen again. So, I was vulnerable. I added the leadership piece, the competence piece. Now, that does a couple of different things. Number one, it creates confidence in my leader in my abilities because my leader is now saying, Wow, okay, now Jacob came forward, he admitted he made a mistake. He also told me what he learned from the mistake that he made. And he told me these corrective actions. He’s taking accountability and responsibility to make sure that these mistakes don’t happen again. I have no problem giving Jacob more work. I have no problem giving him a similar project in the future because he’s demonstrated that level of competence that he’s learning and growing. And too often, I think, just telling employees to be vulnerable is bad leadership advice. It’s bad employee advice. Don’t just talk about the gaps that you have. Talk about what you’re also trying to do to close those gaps. And again, this is crucial because when you show up to work, you have to remember what you got hired for. You got hired because you say that you can do whatever it is that you’re doing that you have certain skills and capabilities and competencies. And if you just show up to work, talking about why you don’t have those competencies, why you don’t have those skills, why you can’t do Your job, why? Whatever it is you want to add to that list, then yeah, the perception of you is going to change, and people are not going to think that you belong in that role. And again, it’s not to say that vulnerability is bad. You want to feel safe to be vulnerable. But you want to add that leadership about competency to those vulnerable situations whenever possible. So that’s what the vulnerable leader equation is. Vulnerability plus leadership equals vulnerable leadership. Competence plus connection.
Aydin Mirzaee 10:33
Got it. And this is really interesting. And so, how do you tie this also back to psychological safety? As you know, part of this being vulnerable would be to talk about like, do these two things relate? Or how would you relate them?
Jacob Morgan 10:48
Yeah, they’re very much related. Amy Edmondson, is actually one of the people who endorsed the book, she’s one of the people that I interviewed in the book. And she was also very clear that vulnerability is not about just letting it all hang out. Right? I mean, we forget, we’re so caught up in feelings and emotions, and you know, kind of all that stuff at work, which has a place, but so does competence. So does being good at your job. So does working hard, and so does work ethic. So it is making the occasional unnecessary sacrifice when needed, so does going above and beyond in your role when it’s required. And I think we’ve largely and collectively lost that way of thinking about work to the point where we’re comfortable pointing out all the problems without trying to come up with solutions. We want purpose and meaning and impact, but we don’t want to do anything to help create that for ourselves. And I think we’ve created largely, and I’m gonna some sounds like, like weak organizations, like weak employees who just don’t have that necessary work ethic backbone required to do what is necessary. I don’t think that’s necessarily a general thing. I think it’s largely been a mindset thing over the past few years. I mean, look at what’s going on. You can’t even get employees to show up in the office anymore. I mean, which is crazy to me. So it’s, you know, again, the psychological safety aspect is crucial because that’s what it starts from, you want to create an environment where, of course, any one of your employees can come to you when needed, talking about a challenge, or a struggle or mistake, or whatever it is. But how you actually do that is different. How you do that is you’re not just vulnerable. You lead with vulnerability. So, one is kind of the culture and the environment that allows you to come forward. And the second part, which is what my book is about, is how you actually come forward, how you go about approaching these things. And, of course, if you don’t have psychological safety, you won’t be able to lead with vulnerability. However, you can’t have psychological safety and not lead with vulnerability. And I think that’s the danger that a lot of a lot of people are struggling with now.
Aydin Mirzaee 12:52
Yeah, that’s a great clarification. And it is an important one to make. Because very often, it’s exactly this concept that we talk about, you need to be safe to fail, and you need to do these things. But something good has to come out of the failure and organizational mindset.
Jacob Morgan 13:10
So again, yeah, and it’s not just, oh, I failed. I mean, if somebody on my team came to me, and or if you work at any established organization, whether small or large, you just go to your leader and say, I’m so sorry, I failed. Who the hell cares? That you failed? Like, if you work for me, and you just come to me and say, Hey, Jacob, I’m really sorry, I failed. My response to you is not going to be Oh, it’s okay. It’s going to be, well, why did that happen? What did you learn from this failure? What are you going to do in the future to make sure that these failures don’t happen again? All right. I mean, I have a team of 12 people that I work with, we all make mistakes. And I frequently asked my team, like, how did this happen? Why did it happen? What are we going to do to make sure that this doesn’t happen again in the future? Let’s talk about it. What did you learn from this? That’s leading with vulnerability. And if you have aspirations of becoming a leader inside of your organization, it’s going to be essential for you to do that because there is a concept in psychology called the pratfall effect, which basically states that if you are vulnerable, and you’re not good at your job, then people will perceive you in a negative light, it will reinforce your mediocrity, because think about it, you haven’t demonstrated competence. And all you do is expose the gaps that you have to your employees and your leaders. They’re going to look at you, and they’re gonna say, Yeah, that makes sense, why you’re not getting promoted, because you’re not good at your job, and you’re demonstrating why you shouldn’t be promoted. However, if you are good at your job and you’re vulnerable. So you’ve demonstrated that competence, that leadership, and now you’re vulnerable. You get an added boost in terms of likability and perception of your levels of competence. Because people look at you and they say, Wow, you’re really good at your job. Now you appear to be human. You’re mortal, just like the rest of us. People like you even more; you get kind of a boost. So it goes to show that vulnerability. If you’re just vulnerable, people will view you as incompetent. If you’re just kind competent people will view you as being a robot. If you are vulnerable and competent, that’s when you get that added boost. That’s what we need more from in terms of leaders.
Aydin Mirzaee 15:10
Yeah, I love it, I can visualize the two by two matrix right there.
Jacob Morgan 15:14
Yep.
Aydin Mirzaee 15:16
Hey, before we move on to the rest of the episode. If you’re an engineering leader, whether manager, director, or VP, all engineering leaders know that one-on-one meetings are a powerful tool for team engagement and productivity. However, not all leaders know how to run these meetings effectively. That’s why the Fellow team just released a comprehensive guide on ‘The Art of the 1:1 Meeting for Engineering Leaders.’ It has over 60 pages of advice from engineering leaders at organizations like Apple, MailChimp, Stripe, GitHub, Intel, and more. We’ve also included expert-approved templates for you to apply immediately to make your one-on-one meetings that much more effective. So head on over to Fellow.app/Resources to access the guide and the exclusive templates right now. We’ll also link it in the show notes for you to check out there. But you can go on over to Fellow.app/Resources to get the guide and the template today. And with that said, let’s go back to the interview.
How’s this different for, I mean you talked to 100 CEOs or more, and so, you know, how is it different at that leadership level? Is it that, you know, for those folks, by default, people just assume that they’re competent because they’re at that leadership level?
Jacob Morgan 16:36
Yeah, I mean, we have this assumption that the more senior you become, the more competent you are. And that assumption is not always true. And there are a couple of stories that I have in the book. One of them is from Hollis Harris. He is the former CEO of Continental Airlines. And I think it was in the early 90s, August of 1993, the airline was going through a very tough time. And he was asked to write a memo to his entire workforce of around, I think it was 35 or 40,000 employees. And he sends out this memo when he talks about all the challenges that the business is going through and the trends that are against them. And he ends his memo by saying the best thing that you as an employee can do is to pray for the future of this company. Now, what Hollis Harris did was very vulnerable, but there was no leadership. And so the following day, he was fired. Now, there’s another story that I talked about in the book, which is from another company called Sasol, a South African energy company, also around 30,000 employees. The CEO, there is Fleetwood Grobler, when he took over as CEO, the company was in near bankruptcy, it was $13 billion in debt, and the banks were about to come in and repossess everything, he too, was asked to give an all-hands meeting to his workforce. But the message he gave was very different. So, he started out with vulnerability. He talked about the challenges that the business was going through, the tough times, the trends, and how everything was against them. And then he added the leadership piece. And he said, but I have a vision of where I think this business can go. I know that we have a talented group of employees here. And if you work with me and help me figure out the next steps that we should be taking, then I know that we can rebuild trust in the eyes of our employees and our customers, we can turn this business around and become successful. Come with me on this journey because I see a path forward. Help me get there. And that’s exactly what they did. They turned the business around. It’s now doing quite well. So one, the first example of Hollis Harris was vulnerability. The second one of Fleetwood Grobler was leading with vulnerability, just exposing the gap, exposing the gap and demonstrating what you’re trying to do to close it.
Aydin Mirzaee 18:37
Yeah, it’s super interesting because, you know, just the way that you describe the second example, which is leading with vulnerability, it didn’t necessarily sound like there was a, they said, again, from that brief passage you mentioned, it didn’t sound like there was like a hey, you know, this is exactly the five steps we need to take to do. It does seem that there is some ambiguity, but there is even a roadmap of how we’re going to figure out how to solve the problem.
Jacob Morgan 19:02
Yeah, I mean, look, leading with vulnerability doesn’t necessarily mean that you always have a solution. Because let’s face it, you’re a new employee at a company, you probably don’t know how to do a lot of things. Does that mean that you can never be vulnerable? No, it just means that if you are vulnerable, try to ask yourself how you can sprinkle leadership on top of that. So you go to your leader at the time, and you say, Hey, I know I went through training, I forgot how to do this. Can you please help me with this but you won’t have to help me again? Because in the future, here’s what I’m going to do to make sure that I can solve my own problem. So again, vulnerable, adding leadership in there, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give a roadmap and a plan, and I know what I’m going to do and this and that that’s and a lot of times can be misconstrued as hubris or arrogance or ego. It just means that instead of just talking about the problems and the gaps that you have, you are demonstrating to those around you that you are trying to close those gaps. So in Fleetwood’s case, he was demonstrating that I do believe See that we can go forward, I do have a vision of where I think we can go. I know we have talented employees. In other words, he’s saying we have this big gap. But I know that we can close it. Because we have people, we have a vision, come with me on this journey, there’s a sense of optimism and positivity in there. So he’s basically saying, here’s the gap, and I see a bridge, I know that we can build a bridge across this gap to get to where we need to get to, I need your help to build it. And that, I think, is a very different message than saying, Well look, the company’s $13 billion in debt, I don’t know, if we’re going to make it, we’re going through a tough time, you know, hopefully, we’ll figure it out. You know, especially if you’re in a leadership role, you cannot say that kind of stuff. If you want to get into a leadership role. Same thing for you. Add the leadership in to any time you can when you are vulnerable. In fact, the definition of a vulnerable leader is a leader who intentionally opens themselves up to the potential of emotional harm. That’s vulnerability. While taking action to create a positive outcome when possible. That’s leadership. So you have to be able to do both of those things.
Aydin Mirzaee 21:11
Love it, and just thinking about the opposite of what vulnerability would look like in this case, you know, there would probably be, hey, next year is going to be an amazing year, we’re going to do all these things, but not kind of showing that, but we are in big trouble. It’s being okay in mentioning what the truth actually is. And saying we do have these problems and acknowledging those sorts of things.
Jacob Morgan 21:32
Yeah, but it’s also important to understand timing and intention. So, for example, one of the other CEOs that I interviewed was Doug Parker, the former CEO and chairman of American Airlines, who stepped down fairly recently. And during the pandemic, everybody was talking about how American Airlines was going bankrupt, and the company was going to go out of business, and it was just going to be a huge disaster. Now, if Doug Parker showed up to work each day saying, hey, you know what, those headlines are true, yes, the company’s going bankrupt, yes, we’re going out of business. And if he communicated that to everybody, then guess what the company probably would have actually gone out of business and gone bankrupt. So Doug Parker told me several times that he would sit in his car before stepping foot into the office, where he would basically be pumping himself up and getting himself excited and trying to be optimistic and positive before he would show up to work. So that employees wouldn’t necessarily see that. So, there are times to be vulnerable. And there are times to not be vulnerable, there are certain situations, and I have some frameworks in the book that kind of help guide people through that. But you have to have that level of awareness. And you have to have that level of attention, intention, sorry. So not every time is a good time to be vulnerable just because you can.
Aydin Mirzaee 22:44
Got it. And that’s really interesting about this story of pumping himself up, you know, before he showed up to the office. Were there other things like that, as you were talking to, you know, the various leaders that people did, was that a common trait of, you know, how did people stay positive in light of it sounds like a lot of very challenging situations.
Jacob Morgan 23:02
Positivity, you know, optimism, I think, is an important attribute for leaders to have. And it’s precisely because especially if you’re, the more senior you are, right? Because everybody looks to you for guidance, everybody looks to you in terms of how you act, how you respond to the things that you say, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to lie to your employees. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t tell them the truth. But it means that you need to understand that the actions, the things that you say and do, have weighed in. So you have to evaluate what makes sense to say and what doesn’t. It’s hard to give just kind of a blanket statement, right? I mean, you look at Doug Parker, who, in his situation, didn’t acknowledge all the negative media about the company going bankrupt. But similarly, you have somebody like Fleetwood Grobler, who did acknowledge all of that. And he did say, yes, the company is in trouble. Yes, we’re in debt, but then he added the leadership piece. So it really depends on the context, it’s hard to give kind of a general rule for everybody in terms of what to say and how to say it. But having that sense of positivity and optimism is going to be important because when you show up, it’s almost like a good virus versus a bad virus. You have to imagine if you’re leading a small team or a large team, and you show up to work, and you’re negative, and you’re beaten down, and you’re pessimistic, that’s going to reflect on everybody around you, everybody who sees you everybody who comes in contact with you, and then sooner or later that becomes the culture of the business. However, if you show up to work, and you talk about, you know what, we do have these challenges, but we’re gonna get through them, we’re gonna crush these challenges. We’re gonna, we have a capable group of people. You know, my business has gone through challenges. I communicate that same way. I’m excited about these new things that we’re going to do. Let’s try something different. Let’s experiment. It’s how you approach those challenges and how you talk about those challenges and obstacles that I think makes all the difference. And you can choose to come at them with a negative view, or you can choose to come at them with a positive and optimistic sense of experimentation and innovation. And I think that’s crucial for leaders.
Aydin Mirzaee 25:02
One of the things that you also talk about is this idea of the ROI that comes along with, you know, embracing vulnerability as an organization. Is there a way to measure, you know, how effectively these strategies are working? Or just like any things you’ve observed in that realm?
Jacob Morgan 25:21
Yeah, there’s a few. I mean, we looked at ROI in terms of a couple of different areas. And I think this makes sense for a lot of people. One is, what’s the ROI for you individually. And the ROI for you individually, simply put, is either you will be a leader or you won’t. And if you don’t lead with vulnerability, and if you can’t create connection and demonstrate competence, you’re not going to be in leadership role for very long, like, why would people want to work with you. So it’s in your best interest to be able to do both, it’s in your best interest to be able to demonstrate that you’re good at your job. It’s also in your best interest to be able to demonstrate to your people that you can connect with them because that’s where motivation and engagement and inspiration and motivation, and all those things come from. Then, we also look in terms of ROI as far as the impact to the business. And you know, we looked at this in a couple of different areas I mentioned. We did the survey with DDI, which is a leadership firm. And we found, looking through a couple of different data points there, that when leaders frequently display vulnerability, when appropriate, employees are almost six times as likely to say that the quality of leadership is very good or excellent. Let me read this other stat here: the percentage of leaders considered high-quality increases by 37%, on average, inside those companies, and these organizations are more than five times as likely to trust their manager, almost twice as likely to develop novel ideas are solutions, they are three times as likely to be engaged in their roles. So there’s a lot in terms of the business impact that leading with vulnerability has to the business. Unfortunately, we also see that very few employees actually work for leaders who demonstrate these qualities of vulnerable leadership. There’s big impact, but there’s low supply.
Aydin Mirzaee 27:10
So it’s clear, like you said, that there’s big impact. So if someone’s listening, they’re a senior leader within an organization, they’re CEO, and they’re thinking that they want to make changes in their organization. And, you know, they want to do it across the board, they want to make sure that all the leaders in their company, all the managers, even first-line managers are, are leading with vulnerability. What are some things that you would suggest, you know, obviously, start with reading the book, which is very important. But are there practical ways of like, can you change an organization so that everybody all of a sudden shifts to this new way of working?
Jacob Morgan 27:44
Well, can you change your organization? Yes. Can you change it suddenly? No, I think a big part of it comes from leading from example. If you, as a leader, want your employees to behave and act in a certain way, you have to start. Right? But I mean, you can’t just show up to work one day and tell your employees, ‘Hey, be vulnerable’ or ‘Hey, lead with vulnerability,’ it’s not going to work like that. You have to behave in a way that you want your employees to behave. That’s kind of what sets the culture; that’s what sets the tone. So, if you want your employees to lead with vulnerability, you have to start leading with vulnerability yourself. And I think that’s true for pretty much any kind of change that any leader wants to drive across a business. You have to be the first one to do it.
Aydin Mirzaee 28:23
Yeah, got it. Lead with example. And one of the things that, you know, I always like to ask is, you talked about your motivations for writing this book, and some of the things that you knew about vulnerability, you know, through your previous work in research, was there anything that in the interviews in the process of writing and researching that you found was most surprising to you, or is like something that was unexpected?
Jacob Morgan 28:46
There were a few things. One of them, if I remember correctly, only 16% of employees around the world work for leaders who always or very frequently display these qualities of vulnerable leadership. And so the vast majority of employees around the world do not work for a leader that is comfortable, acknowledging failures or challenges is not comfortable, being emotionally vulnerable, is not asking about the well being of their employees is not willing to talk about, as I mentioned, mistakes and failures and challenges. So it’s no wonder that so many employees around the world are not engaged in their jobs because we work for a lot of robots out there. And so I thought that, to me, was a very, very surprising statistic. The second thing that I was very surprised by is that how many leaders out there, they’re not bad people, right? They are good people. They are good leaders. They just don’t have the tools and resources and frameworks required to point them in the right direction for how to make this come to life. And so my hope is that this book will solve that problem and allow people to lead with vulnerability.
Aydin Mirzaee 29:50
Yeah. And you know, it’s very interesting. One example that you know, or one anecdote that comes to mind is that when you don’t talk about things that go wrong. And it’s in a context of always just talking about only the positive. It starts to possibly diminish, you know, people’s trust in you as well, because it sounds like you’re, you know, brushing under the rug the things that should be said as, as well. So it’s if you don’t lead with vulnerability, there are trust issues, everything over the course of time.
Jacob Morgan 30:22
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And then, once you don’t have trust, everything falls off a cliff from there. So yeah, there’s a big relationship between trust and leading with vulnerability.
Aydin Mirzaee 30:32
Yeah. So, Jacob, this has been great. We’ve talked about a whole bunch of different stories and anecdotes, the concept of leading with vulnerability. You can’t just identify the gaps. You also have to have a roadmap of how to close those gaps and so much more. So the book is ‘Leading with Vulnerability.’ It was just released. You can find it.
Jacob Morgan 30:49
We made a special URL for it as well, if people are curious. I mean, obviously, you can go to Amazon and stuff like that. But the URL we made for it is LeadwithVulnerability.com, in case people need something easy to remember.
Aydin Mirzaee 31:00
And, of course, we’ll include that in the show notes as well. Jacob, thanks again for writing this book. Another one to add to your list. And this was really fun. Thanks so much for doing this.
Jacob Morgan 31:11
Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Aydin Mirzaee 31:14
And that’s it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Supermanagers podcast. You can find the show notes and transcript at www.Fellow.app/Supermanagers. If you liked the content, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe so you can get notified when we post the next episode. And please tell your friends and fellow managers about it. It’d be awesome if you can help us spread the word about the show. See you next time.
Latest episodes
-
Tony Martignetti, Advisor to Innovative Leaders on How to Make an Impact Without Burnout
Episode 187
Tony Martignetti
-
Susan Odle, Operational Change Expert: Why 70% of All Change Management Fails
Episode 186
Susan Odle
-
Michael Bungay Stanier, Author of #1 Bestselling Book ‘The Coaching Habit,’ on How to Work With (Almost) Anyone
Episode 183
Michael Bungay Stanier
Management insights straight to your inbox.
Join the Supermanagers TLDR newsletter and become a great leader.
-
Episode 1
Top 10 Leadership Lessons From the Supermanagers Podcast
-
Episode 80
Are You a Micromanager or a Coach? Why Leaders Should Avoid Giving Advice and What To Do Instead
Dr. Julia Milner
Leadership Professor at EDHEC Business School
-
Episode 87
You Won’t Have All the Answers: Why Being Intellectually Honest and Disassociating from Ideas Makes You a Better Lead
Rémi Guyot
Chief Product Officer at BlaBlaCar
-
Episode 3
Mark Frein, COO at Oyster on Being a Multifunctional Executive and Harnessing Pattern Recognition in Leadership Roles
Mark Frein
COO at Oyster
-
Episode 33
Balancing Challenge and Care at Work: The Radical Candor Approach
Amy Sandler
Chief Content Officer at Radical Candor
-
Episode 10
Empowering Your Team to Lead Fulfilling Lives
Vlad Magdalin
CEO AT WEBFLOW
-
Episode 4
Rob Khazzam, CEO at Float on Building a Culture of Urgency, Customer Obsession, and Risk Tolerance
Rob Khazzam
Co-Founder and CEO at Float