Why Being Vulnerable Is A Strength
Edition#056
Introduction
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Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
Leaders, Don’t Be Afraid to Admit Your Flaws
A new study from Kellogg Insight found that leaders who confess faults are seen as more authentic but no less competent than those who don’t and that employees prefer to work with leaders who admit their foibles.
Here are some key takeaways:
Being seen as vulnerable is not a sign of weakness.
The study found that disclosing a weakness makes someone’s behaviour seem less calculated, making that individual seem more authentic.
People prefer to work with authentic leaders again for new initiatives and projects. Hence, vulnerability acceptance has positive downstream effects too.
Read the entire article here.
Leadership Lessons in Building a Disruptive and Value-Driven Marketing Firm
In this conversation with Pooja Jauhari, she talks about her learnings in transforming from a marketing professional to an entrepreneur.
Here’s a summary of key take-outs:
Her early formative years created foundational value systems in her life and career.
Me being a servant of We - a brilliantly articulated leadership thought.
Getting comfortable with being silent.
If she were to hire a marketing team, what would it look like.
The transformation she had to do from being a VP to a CEO
You can listen to this episode on:
On Design: In Architecture, Objects and Music
One of the most well-known and legendary architects Rafael Vinoly, passed away last week. He had designed landmark buildings internationally like the Frederick P. Rose Hall, the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, as the world's largest performance, education, and broadcast facility built specifically for jazz. In this brilliant and absorbing conversation, he talks to Kirill Gerstein, a well-known pianist, about the intersection of architecture and music.
Some interesting thoughts shared by him, which will make us think in this conversation:
Architecture is a fight against gravity and music's conquest of time.
When you experience pure beauty, there is a biological reaction that is not measurable but registrable, but something happens in your neurons. Typically, we are used to binary responses.
He shares a brilliant thought that - according to him, he sees a concert hall as an instrument!
The importance of ‘educating a client’ to develop world-class architecture.
He talks about audience experience and how the individual listening to the concert or orchestra, in this case, at the Kimmel Centre, is the software!
How buildings or anything must be designed to help something happen inside!
How creators of great things or designs cannot explain why it is great!
The thinking behind how an architect redesigned a piano.
Why Being Vulnerable Is A Strength
None of us has answers to all questions or ideal solutions for problems or crises. However, most of us learn not to expose our flaws as they could create a wrong perception among others. We are conditioned this way from when we are a kid or at school or college. If you are a topper, you can make no mistakes; else, you are looked down upon. Hence, as we get older or become more experienced or senior in an organisation, we either create a false self-expectation that we must be able to solve problems else we are not good enough, or people around us create that expectation from us. This leads to an unrealistic situation of being unable to express our vulnerabilities. Hence, we start to ‘act, either consciously or unconsciously, in a manner that is not authentic, and some people around us see it through. Hence, we must encourage people to express their vulnerability and be comfortable seeking help from people who may have strengths or skills better than us in different areas. This must not be seen as a sign of weakness but should be seen as a sign of strength. This requires us to have inner confidence and not get swayed by impressions of what others think or feel about us.
The best leaders in teams or individuals understand this. They build a set of trusted lieutenants at every level who can complement their strengths and contribute to their thinking and decisions. Also, being vulnerable requires the strength to encourage, receive, or appreciate hard feedback and differentiate the genuine from the biased ones.
Sometimes, tough leaders are overrated and overhyped. The best ones are malleable leaders with the right balance of toughness and vulnerability.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
The importance of vulnerability as a virtue in people and leaders.
Me being a servant of we - a powerful leadership thought.
Designs are an expression of feelings, and they come through only when we deeply observe and understand the domain or subject we are working on.