Sharing Vulnerabilities Builds Trust
Relationships May 24th, 2008I recently shared a brief life autobiography at my workplace as part of a team building and employee engagement emphasis at our monthly staff meeting. I was a bit apprehensive at the idea at first but once I prepared for it and wrapped my life into a few minutes of stories and presentation of pictures, the whole experience turned out to be quite enjoyable. This was partly due to the discussions and questions from others after hearing my story. My approach for the autobiography, was that I really wanted to present it in a way that showed some of my life lessons, not just a time line of events with pictures and I am happy I did because a number of people told me that was what they liked most about it.
The Story (not) Revealed
Since I thoroughly enjoy telling stories, I had a few to present from different times in my life. I used the techniques I wrote about here to capture the audience and I was able to stay quite excited and animated in the delivery of my presentation. I’m not actually going to share my autobiography here as that is far better suited in person than in written form. Instead, I’ll expand on the story of what I experienced and learned from doing it. Some of the topics I had in my autobiography, I wanted to ensure were new to people and unknown so they were either things from back in my past I haven’t shared much or things I haven’t told that many people at my work. This was a risk I wanted to take as I’ve learned that sharing more of my heartfelt opinions and beliefs is quite valuable for relationships. Let me expand on that…
Vulnerabilities Open Many Doors
I used to be a master at hiding things in my life and didn’t share my passions as I wanted to present myself as an indestructible, unemotional, untouchable guy. Well, I can now comfortably admit that isn’t true, I don’t give that impression nearly as much anymore (still working on that) and because of that I have seen many of my relationships develop simply by tearing down those false impressions and by sharing more truths about myself. These truths are obviously open to interpretation by others once revealed and once you share them, you no longer have any control over what they think. The audience can agree with them or not, like or dislike, change their impressions, have a new attitude because of them, etc, etc. All of these things are risky if you are concerned what others think of you. That is the key in sharing these vulnerabilities, you need to allow others to think what they want and NOT worry about what they think. Its important to build relationships on who you really are. If people use your stories against you or change their attitude or impression of you, you need to be OK with that. You should want people to accept you without making their own judgments anyway.
So, not only do others find out more about you, but they might also relate to your stories and be more willing to share there own experience or feelings on a topic. The more you know about a person, the easier it is to trust them as there are less unknowns and certainly less doubt about what they will do in certain circumstances. After all, not knowing that is exactly where mis-trust comes from. If you have no understanding of or experience in how a person will respond in a certain situation, it is difficult to trust them as you don’t really know what they will do or act in that situation. However, if you know more about how they act or respond in similar and other situations it is far easier to predict or expect a similar response, so there is more trust because of that knowledge.
Build Confidence With Your Vulnerabilities
Many times the fear of what others think is what holds people back from sharing anything. To turn this thinking around so it is less of a fear you need to re-frame your thoughts around sharing things. Consider some of the great things (these are just a few) from sharing these ‘risky’ topics, which may be good or bad experiences.
- Connect more with others who’ve had a similar experience
- Help others see and understand what made you who you are
- Teach some lesson or have a moral of the story
- Someone else may not make the same mistake as you
- Inspire others to do something similar from what you share
- You can feel relief by getting things off your back
- Difficult experiences will often lead to others having compassion for you
The more you expect and think these types of things will happen when you share the more comfortable you can be about sharing them. Then doing it will allow you to actually start to experience some of those things. That will build your confidence further and be encouraging to do it more and more. As you gain confidence to express more vulnerabilities, you will be more and more honest with yourself and with others and it will continue to get easier and be more valuable.
What About in Your Life?
How many times have you been willing to admit some embarrassing moment or stupid thing you have done only AFTER someone else admits they have done it before. Would you have dared to share it first? If not, why? Think about why hearing the story from someone else helped you to share yours immediately afterward. That’s because their vulnerability allowed you to trust them with your own story. Consider this in other areas and topics in your life, why not share first and open the door to better relationships, more trust with your friends and colleagues and comfort about yourself.
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May 24th, 2008 at 7:55 AM
Fantastic post!
Relates to me so much.
JD put it nicely here:
http://thebookshare.blogspot.com/2008/01/building-trust-on-your-teams.html
I really a big fan of vulnerability based approach. Some might abuse it, i wipe those folks out of my life. Vast majority of people appreciate such openness. It builds trust – customers, co-workers, managers, reports, family – you name it, I tried it everywhere, it always pays off.
alikl
May 26th, 2008 at 4:57 AM
Mike,
Great post! It really has me thinking. Do you mind if I ask how your team building meeting leader asked people to share their stories. Was it optional? I like this idea but realize it could be very uncomfortable for more reserved personalities to participate in a session like this.
Michael
May 26th, 2008 at 6:03 AM
Thanks for the comment Alik, that’s great to see this method is one you can relate with, it has recently become much more meaningful for me, that’s for sure.
And thanks for the comment as well Michael, I’ll elaborate. We were actually brainstorming on ways to get our staff meetings a little more exciting and our COO thought of this idea. We have a pretty daring management group with a high level of trust and support and we all regularly commit to stepping outside our comfort zones and doing new things so everyone agreed that this idea was one of those things that we’d commit to do. It was completely optional, but encouraged. We’ve now had all but one manager complete their’s now. Everyone has quite enjoyed it even if they didn’t like the idea at first!
May 26th, 2008 at 12:48 PM
I do go out on outings or meetings with my team from Winning Everyone, and the great part is that we understand each other, knowing vulnerabilities and knowing how to build each other up into having positive fun enjoying time outside.
This builds not only trust but also a powerful fellowship that can go and achieve greater things. 🙂
May 27th, 2008 at 7:00 AM
You call it vulnerability; I call it “exposing our baggage”. Either way it is critical for organization and team success. Great job!
May 27th, 2008 at 7:54 AM
Great post! I’ve had simliar experiences on several occasions. Once you take off the veil of false perfection, the floodgates open and new possibilities emerge. Thank you for the reminder to always just be me and not worry about the thoughts of others.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:03 AM
This is such an interesting and thought provoking article.
Opening up to others with a little of our story, helps everyone to see us as ‘people’ rather than ‘resources’ and that can only be a good thing?
I’ve made enough embarrasing mistakes in my life, I could keep a room amused for hours!
May 29th, 2008 at 6:43 AM
Daniel, that’s great you already take action to share more and learn about each other. That always creates a closer more productive team, just like you said towards great things!
Rich, you’re right you can certainly label it differently, either way, yes, its important for team success.
Chris. Floodgates is a GREAT analogy. It seems that once you see it and practice it, you just can’t stop it from happening more and more in your life!
Kate, I’m glad the article sparked some need to ponder it! “People rather than resources”. I really like that, didn’t think about it from that perspective yet, but its certainly true! As for those moments, don’t we all. Don’t we all.. 🙂