Have we lost control of our world?
It is natural for us to feel confused, dazed, even fearful in these days where a virus is rampantly spreading across the world. We, humans, naturally gravitate toward safety and a false illusion of control. Controlling our environment as much as we can is how we have survived millennia as a species. It is our instinct. We have developed societal organisation. In a Darwinian view we survived because we could develop a social suite and morality. We developed a variety of collaboration methods and technology in order to control our environment. When that sense of control disappears, it is as if somebody pulled the rug away from underneath our feet. And you suddenly realise that your future is in the hands of others; doctors, epidemiologists, politicians. Or looked upon in another way your future is exposed as it mostly is, left to complete chance.
In brief we feel exposed and our vulnerability, individually and collectively, is there for everyone to experience.
This is an opportunity for learning. Sharing our vulnerability is an underestimated superpower. Our evolutionary history has not trained us this way, leaders are supposed to be strong, know what to do, show the way! Be decisive! Don’t hesitate, and above all do not show weakness! Ironically, most of us react with openness, encouragement and a non-judgemental mind when exposed to vulnerability.
Some years back I was attending a leadership training session that was designed to help instil a major organisational transformation in a large international company. The group that led it was serious, professional and partially formed by ex-navy seals. They were thoughtful and ran a great program. One of the concepts they made us work on was “creating a platform for listening”. What they meant was this; “How do you create the best basis for two people or a group of people to really pay attention to each other, to be present and be non-judgemental?” For example, say you start a review of an employee by telling the person all the things he or she did wrong in the last three months. It is highly unlikely that the person will be in a mood to listen or improve, rather they are immediately put on the backfoot and defensive. The right approach is to create a minimum feeling of safety, a space where a person feel they can be honest and share their thoughts. If you can open a conversation, or presentation by exposing some vulnerability of your own, you are much more likely to have your audience with you. It does not mean that you cannot communicate sensitive topics or give corrective feedback. It just creates a much better environment for doing so. It means you have indeed “created a platform for listening”.
David Whyte is a poet and associate fellow at Said Business school at the university of Oxford, he has written a brilliant short book called “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying meaning of Everyday Words.” On vulnerability he wrote a beautiful piece that must be close to the ultimate meaning of the word:
Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
I think it is a wonderful, most profound and thoughtful piece of writing. I have re-read it many times over.
As we are hurtling through a global pandemic, sharing vulnerability doesn’t mean that we do not lead. It just makes for a better dialogue, it engenders openness, it makes people comfortable in making their own choices. As vulnerability so brilliantly described by David Whyte is part of the human condition, we might as well embrace it as the superpower that it is. It is not intuitively logical that it is a superpower. Like kindness, vulnerability can be confused with weakness, which neither are. They are foundations for great leadership.
Despite what is hitting us, I wish you all a great week, stay healthy, and continue your journey to learn, grow and lead.
Bo
