Leading with Vulnerability: The Power of Open Communication in Building Trust with Claire Chandler
Communication is the key to a collaborative team environment. Yet, what about communication makes some leaders influential and others not? In this podcast episode, we dive into teamwork and how leaders willing to show vulnerability can inspire and motivate their teams to create winning results.
After this episode, you'll be able to...
Demonstrate ways to be vulnerable and inspire others
Create an open, supportive problem-solving environment
Promote innovation through collaboration and feedback
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About our guest:
President and Founder of Talent Boost, Claire Chandler specializes in aligning HR and business leaders so they can deliver strategic outcomes... both today and in the future. She taps into over 25 years of experience in people leadership, human resources, and business ownership to help leadership teams work together more effectively in less time, with less cultural resistance, so they can accelerate their business growth.
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The Power of Employee Voice
Communication is the key to a collaborative team environment. Vulnerability can inspire and motivate teams to create winning results.
And during the course of my corporate career, I had the good fortune of working for some really great leaders. And to your point, I worked for and with and around. Not so great leaders that I knew the difference, your corporate audience can certainly relate to this as you forge your career path, you were exposed to some great inspirational people that you want to follow, but you also learn as much from, if not more, from those who you don't feel do it.
And sometimes the key strategic initiatives or the key performance initiatives are often interchangeable.
One of the chapters that I wrote in my book talks about the importance of listening to employees in all ranks.
That added the greatest value because they were willing to ask questions that sometimes other people didn't as well as they had a new and fresh perspective on sometimes how other organizations or industries worked.
So I always valued the fresh perspectives of the new employees, and then of course the more tenured employees who have been able to share what worked, and what hasn't worked, and then combining the two together and possibly thinking about advisory boards or fireside chats.
There's a variety of ways to do that listening tour, but it's so important for leaders to take a step back and truly ask the questions and listen.
Opening a Conversation
Take the time to be vulnerable and open up the conversations.
What are the things we should start doing?
What should we stop doing as an organization and what could we continue to do? And to take that a step further, what are some of the resources that you need to be successful and to sit back and listen?
At the end of the day, your employees are the ones that are executing the key strategic initiatives.
So we need to know what's important to them and what tools and resources that we can provide them for them to be successful.
And we also have to create an environment where employees work side by.
Healthy Environment
When I see environments, it's important that when we're creating this space for this open dialogue to happen amongst either different divisions within an organization or a leadership team in the employees. It's creating a psychologically safe environment where people can feel like they can express themselves.
Their concerns, and their frustrations without the fear of losing their job or their reputation being compromised, or people perceiving them as different. And it's important that when leaders are approaching this type of environment, their employees, that they're taking the time to listen to them, and that their feelings are valid.
Whether you agree with them or not, you going to acknowledge what they're saying and how they feel because there is a reality to how they feel.
Even if you may not agree with it, take the time to explore, ask some clarifying questions, and take some time to ask questions. So really get in, uh, a sales technique that I use in leadership.
The influential leader that you had, everybody knew what those initiatives were because they made them crystal clear is what it sounded like.
And that's another area where a lot of less experienced leaders make a misstep. They overcomplicate what should be simpler.
And I think a lot of companies, make that same mistake with their mission statements, with their strategic plans, with setting performance expectations because they think if it's too simple, people will think it is simplistic.
It's been my experience that the simpler you can make it for people, the clearer they can see a connection between what they are contributing and why that matters to the bigger picture.
That's how you deepen engagement. That's how you strengthen cultures, and that's how you create an environment where people can be authentic and vulnerable and truly free to do what fuels them and what fires them up in ways that are gonna move the needle on the shared.
And that's wonderful and that sounds great, and it's very attractive. And oh, that means I'm gonna have the freedom to do my job the way I wanna do it, where I wanna do it in ways that, you know, motivate me and align with my talents.
We hire people because we promise them a culture where entrepreneurial spirit will be rewarded and then we penalize them if they don't conform.
Don't turn around and wonder why your people are not doing the right things when no one is looking.
Vulnerability Leads To Trust
We don't like to be controlled.
So the more that we try that the organizations and leaders try to control people and conform people, they're gonna be feeling out of alignment.
I felt sometimes in corporate that I was living one life at home and one life and work because I couldn't be my true, authentic self, in the environment that I was in, I felt like I was being judged a lot and then it doesn't feel right.
We kind of lose a sense of meaning and purpose in our careers when we're not always in alignment.
A lot of corporate cultures kind of go awry right there. There is a lot of managerial expert advice that says you should delegate decision-making down to the most localized level possible.
And when you say that in a boardroom or you say that to an executive leadership team, they go, yes, of course, that's what we should do.
We should empower our employees. That's why we're here.
A lot of corporate organizations struggle with achieving their longer-term objectives by retaining the talent truly engaging the very highest levels of performance from their people because they don't wanna fully commit cause they don't trust the leaders.
If you don't show vulnerability and authenticity and own your own walk, you're not gonna build trust.
Vulnerability leads to trust and a trust-based culture is one that thrives where employees are filled, and fulfilled.
They feel heard. Communication is an open door and also it's going to increase productivity and retention.
