Practicing Vulnerability and Developing Shame Resilience

Submitted by Cindy Leavitt

As a leader, you and your teams will make mistakes, experiments will fail, people will criticize, and blame will be assessed. This may lead you to feel unworthy, inadequate, and full of shame. Building shame resilience in yourself will allow you to confidently keep leading and continue to stay in the arena.

After my marriage of twenty-three years ended, it took me several years to be open to the idea of a new relationship. When I decided that I was ready to start dating again, I was filled with dread. This wasn’t helped by the reactions by most of my friends, who confirmed that it sounded truly awful. For me, the feelings of dating brought back the horror and shame of not being asked to dance in middle school.

However, I wanted to live more fully and share my life with someone, which meant that I was going to need to be vulnerable, knowing that rejection was going to be a natural and necessary part of dating.

It was during this time, that a friend introduced me to Brené Brown. Her TED video on “The Power of Vulnerability” and her book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, helped me reframe the way that I thought about vulnerability and shame.

One of the most important concepts in Brown’s research is that shame, which is the fear of disconnection or not being enough, is a universal emotion. Shame can’t be avoided and has many common triggers. For women, the most common shame trigger is physical appearance, and for men, the most common shame trigger is appearing weak. If we can recognize when we are feeling shame and talk about it openly in a safe and supportive environment, we can build shame resilience.

The book was my guide as I threw my hat into the dating ring. I did all sorts of things that required vulnerability and developing shame resistance. I signed up for match.com. I met a lot of nice people, and some not so nice people. I tried English Country Line dancing, Contra dancing, and Swing dancing. I went on vacations by myself.

It wasn’t always easy, and I often battled shame and loneliness. I was lucky that I had lots of supportive family and friends to help me through. My vulnerability was rewarded because I met Mark. We read Daring Greatly together during our courtship and it helped us talk about shame openly so that each of us could do our own self-mastery work. Mark and I just celebrated our second anniversary.

This example in my personal life demonstrates that being vulnerable and learning shame resilience can have a huge payoff, but why does it matter at work?

As a leader at work, what you need most is information and ideas from everyone. This means that you need people to be vulnerable and open. Demonstrating vulnerability builds trust, and gives permission and a model for everyone in the organization to do the same. Believe me, everyone knows that you are not perfect, and when you openly admit it, their reactions can be surprising and refreshing.

Talking about shame builds “shame resistance.” Understanding when our actions and reactions are promoting shame as leaders is essential so we can change the behaviors in ourselves and our teams. Ignoring shame doesn’t make it go away, it makes it stronger.

A simple example at work occurred last week. One of the managers in our group asked if I was open to feedback. He relayed his concerns about how much stress another team was under because of the multiple simultaneous changes that I was asking them to make. He advocated for the reversal of some decisions that I had made. I thanked him very much for the feedback. He told me that he thought that I would be open because of our previous interactions and his director had encouraged him to bring his concerns directly to me. After confirming the information with the manager of the affected team, we altered a few things and the changes were received with much appreciation by the group.

A couple of years ago before I understood about shame resilience and moving away from fear,

●      I might have changed the decision but would have ruminated for days about making a mistake, or

●      I might have reacted defensively because of shame and not been willing to quickly respond to the concerns.

I have been questioned about why I am willing to be so open and vulnerable on my blog. It is because vulnerability and reducing shame are essential if we are going to have engaged employees and innovation in our workplaces:

“A sense of worthiness inspires us to be vulnerable, share openly, and persevere. Shame keeps us small, resentful, and afraid. In shame-prone cultures, where parents, leaders, and administrators consciously or unconsciously encourage people to connect their self-worth to what they produce, I see disengagement, blame, gossip, stagnation, favoritism, and a total dearth of creativity and innovation.” - Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Being vulnerable and talking about shame requires tremendous courage and confidence. How willing are you to be vulnerable so that you create an environment where others are safe to be the same?