We’ve embraced vulnerability as a leadership superpower. But what if we’re ignoring the context that makes it a career-ending liability?
For the last decade, vulnerability has been one of the words dominating the leadership discourse.
It has been proposed as the antidote to archaic, ‘command-and-control’ leadership. It’s the pathway to trust, the bedrock of psychological safety, and the mark of being courageous and authentic. We have since been continuously attempting to replace the stoic, infallible leader with the ideal of the open, ‘whole-self’ leader.
I admit that this is, in intent, a very positive shift.
But as a coach who works almost exclusively with leaders in high-stakes environments, I must also admit: this advice is, at best, incomplete. For many leaders, it is dangerously bad advice.
In your real world, you probably sense that vulnerability can be a trap. You know that what is preached as courage in a keynote is often interpreted as incompetence in a boardroom. You know that it can be, and often is, career suicide.
You are not wrong. And you are not alone in feeling this way.
The simplistic invitation to be vulnerable ignores three inconvenient truths: the reality of interpretation, the imperfection of our cultures, and the unequal distribution of permission.
For leaders who want to be effective — not just popular — we need a more sophisticated conversation. We must distinguish between the public performance of leadership and the private process of being human.
If you’re a sponsor (like HR or a CEO) looking to develop effective leaders, it is useful if you can understand the nuance in this.
Intention vs Perception
The intent behind a leader’s act of vulnerability is almost always to build trust. The hope is that this authenticity will be met in kind, creating a stronger, more human connection.
However, a leader’s intent does not guarantee their impact. The message is always filtered through the receiver’s context.
What is the team’s context? Employees look to their leader, in large part, to absorb and manage organizational ambiguity. Their sense of psychological safety within the larger organization is often deeply tied to their leaders’ perceived stability.
When a leader shares unprocessed uncertainty or raw anxiety, the team may not interpret it as “courageous authenticity.” They may perceive it as a transfer of burden, and instead of feeling safer, the team can suddenly feel less safe.
Get crystal clear on this: Are you sharing to build connection, or are you sharing to find relief?
The team can almost always feel the difference. One is a strategic act of leadership; the other can inadvertently create collateral anxiety, undermining the very trust you hoped to build.
You Must Lead in the Culture You Have
I’ve heard proponents of vulnerability say, “If you’re punished for vulnerability, the culture is toxic, not the advice.”
This is true. And it is useless in the short-term. Steering the culture in a healthier direction is, of course, a vital, long-term goal of leadership.
But that is a different point altogether from the practical advice a leader needs to be effective and thrive today.
Very rarely do you get to lead in a utopian culture. You must lead in the one you have, with all its political complexities and imperfections. I’ve coached leaders whose well-intentioned vulnerability was weaponized in a power struggle, painting them as unstable or indecisive.
Advising you to act as if that imperfect culture is already safe is naive and negligent. It confuses the long-term project of changing the culture with the immediate reality of navigating its complexity.
The Unequal Permission to ‘Be Human’
An unfortunate reality is that often, the permission to be vulnerable is not granted to all leaders equally.
For example, when a male leader shares his doubts, he might be praised for being “human” and “self-aware.”
But when a female leader shares her doubts, she might trigger unconscious bias and is seen as “emotional” or “unstable.”
When a leader of color shares their doubts, they risk being seen as “not belonging” or “lacking executive presence.”
Many leaders I work with live in this perpetual double-bind. Their vulnerability is interpreted as weakness, but their strength is penalized as being abrasive or cold.
The Confidential Coaching Container
So, if you can’t, and often shouldn’t, process your raw emotions with your team, where do you do it?
The answer is not to be an inauthentic, masked actor. Employees can spot a performance, and trust dies. Your own self-image takes a hit.
The answer is to create a fierce, disciplined boundary between private processing and public leadership.
This is a major function of my work as an executive coach.
When I’m talking to someone with a high level of responsibility, I encourage them to have a confidential container — either therapy or coaching, depending on their needs — where they can be truly vulnerable.
Coaching is the place to test-drive new ways of being, be wrong, or lost without any professional consequence, and build the clarity that allows you to be powerful, present, and decisive in public.
A lot of times, it is the only place where you can be 100% real.
It is a strategic and necessary hygiene of processing the pressure, ambiguity, and anxiety that comes with your job, and build your grounding in presence.
From Vulnerability to Grounded Clarity
When you do this deep, private work, you gain true clarity.
That clarity is what allows you to walk into the boardroom or the all-hands meeting and be at home in yourself. This isn’t faking it, which is a state of dissonance that people can always spot. This is the authentic result of having done the hard work in private.
You achieve congruence: your internal state now matches your external words. This congruence is what a team experiences as stability and trusts implicitly.
With this clarity, you also gain the wisdom to practice selective, strategic vulnerability.
Here’s a simplified example from one of my clients:
Unprocessed Vulnerability: “I’m so overwhelmed, I don’t know if this project will work, and I’m worried about layoffs.” (This is anxiety-dumping).
Processed Vulnerability: “We’re facing a major headwind, and it’s tough. I’ve spent the week analyzing the data, and I’m concerned about X and Y. Here’s the plan, and here’s where I need your help.” (This shares uncertainty but provides stability).
The first makes the team feel unsafe. The second invites the team in to solve a problem with them.
So, if you are a leader feeling caught in this trap, or a sponsor looking to truly support your senior talent, I invite you to consider the contextual nuance before subscribing to simplistic leadership development buzzwords and frameworks. Trends like these usually lack the nuance where truth lives.
One of the things that differentiates high level coaching is attention to detail and specificity. Supporting leaders through their uniquely individual journey is only possible by investing in a confidential space for your leaders to be real.
Trust is not built by a leader falling apart. It’s built by a leader who proves they can hold the container for everyone else, and they can do that better if they have a confidential thinking partner who is holding a container for them.
