Communicating With Vulnerability and Confidence

Karen Laos

Communication Intelligence examines the idea of not seeing vulnerability as a weakness in communication, especially when it involves leaders and is combined with confidence.

It was not known at the time of starting to gain understanding on this subject that it was already a hot topic. Articles about this topic have been published fairly recently in the Harvard Business Review, Inc. magazine and Forbes and a lengthy list of other publications.

It must be an important point regarding emotions, psychology and communication behavior.

This C.I. conversation involves, Karen Laos, a communication expert, confidence cultivator and CEO of Karen Laos Consulting; Jeremy Babener, a business advisor and the founder and president at Structured Consulting and Gene Cabellero, co-founder at GreenPal.

Vulnerability is extremely difficult to express for many people as it can be viewed as a practice of great risk and diminishing return. Combined with confidence and resilience, could it be viewed differently?

“It’s all about the balance between connection — warmth, likability — and credibility — competence, expertise,” says Laos.

Jeremy Babener

Being sufficiently secure enough to acknowledge doubt can surprisingly show humanness and relatability.

“Explicitly acknowledging your uncertainty is a great way to show vulnerability,” Babener says. “In fact, sharing your thoughts with confidence and acknowledging uncertainty at the same time is an excellent way for your team to participate in your thinking.”

This can communicate something that can be respected.

“They'll appreciate that you've considered your plan and assume that it has merit based on their respect for your abilities,” Babener says. “And they'll be excited to build, modify and even replace it, based on your invitation for feedback.”

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This mindset has to start somewhere and that is introspection and the courage to come to an honest evaluation.

“Be self-aware,” Caballero says. “Know and accept yourself as you are. For example, you can write a journal to reflect on your thoughts and feelings.”

When communicating vulnerability with confidence, Laos goes into brief detail about what can land well with other people.

“We have to have strength in our voice along with a warm tone and facial expression,” she says. “Specifically, voice mechanics such as projection through volume and a declarative tone, one where we speak with conviction and punctuation, ending our statements with periods instead of question marks. We need to sound like we know what we’re talking about and that’s when people decide if we’re credible.”

Laos elaborates on the emotional part to convey welcomed humanness.

“Warmth is what connects us and is directly linked to likability and when people like us, they want to listen to us and therefore we have a greater chance of influencing them,” she says.

How people communicate is something to have a smart plan for to increase the odds of desired results.

“Of equal importance, is our message itself. We need to be clear, such as leading with a point and keeping it simple; avoiding rambling so the point is not lost.”

Gene Caballero

It can be easier to vulnerable and confident, Caballero says, by first focusing on oneself.

“Be self-compassionate,” he says. “Treat yourself with kindness and respect.” From there, he suggests, “Be curious. Be open to learning and understanding. Be courageous. Be humble. Don't let your ego stop your growth. For example, you can admit when you are wrong or don’t know something, or thank someone who helped you or taught you something.”

Communication and the person or organization from where it is coming can be judged more favorably when errors aren’t ignored or hidden.

“The best way to show vulnerability is to admit a mistake,” Laos says. “Share failures and lessons learned. That creates connection.” It’s also helpful, she points out, to “lean into negative realities,” because, “Many leaders shy away from that and it erodes trust.”

That approach is shortsighted and dangerous relationships and reputation.

“For example, a company’s revenue was not good and the whole team knew it but at the big staff meeting the president and CEO ignored that fact — they put on a smiling face acting like everything was fine. This pushing reality under the rug created division between leadership and the team,” Laos says.

Better to have done what was professional and encouraging.

“If they had simply acknowledged it by saying something like ‘Things are tough right now, but we’re going to make it through, and here’s our plan to do that,’ that would have shifted things completely, building both trust and respect,” she adds.

Babener wanted to end the conversation by mentioning a resource that impressed him. “I highly recommend the book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which speaks to the productive conflict as a way to arrive at the best answer,” he says. “Productive conflict can only happen when members of the team trust each other to give feedback based on what’s best for the team and not based on the desire to avoid uncomfortable conversations.”